NorsePlay Investigates: The Sonoran Troll.
With The Map Of Midgard's Project's broad idea of inclusion born of an expansive Heathen Worldview, I've added a mappoint in my Tucson's very own Catalina Mountain range for what is known as the Sonoran Sasquatch. If we look at the sasquatch/bigfoot idea through a Norse Lore lens, we can see these creatures best fitting the idea of trolls, so in this context to fit the map I've stickpinned this entity as The Sonoran Troll.
I'd first heard of this creature from this website, which has two photos from its evidence page that are completely pulled from elsewhere: a werewolf's large footprint casting, and the giant's footprint with a human's barefoot in the heel from somewhere in China. You could write the website off right there, except their following photo actually matches a bit of SE Rose Canyon Lake shoreline:
 |
| [But is it just bears ... ?] |
The following's a topographical map of the area:
Running with the folkloric accounts that trolls as nocturnal beings live underhill as sunlight petrifies them (though as per the previous daylight photo this is certainly not hard & fast, plus one would suppose various types of trolls who lack photofatality), after walking around the whole lake to scope the shore first, I'd decided to climb all the significant hills that surround it.
The red circles I've added in this canted 3D satellite photo above are the four hilltops that surround the lake.
 |
| [the sweet NorsePlay Mobile with my window sticker!] |
Getting there in the late morning, I wanted to find overlarge or inhuman footprints on the lakeside, runes or trollrúnar marked on trees/rocks/bark, artificial stone structures/shelters made beyond normal human lifting capacities, and caves into the gold-strewn kingdoms of the trolls themselves (and maybe some comely huldra to socialize with).
 |
| [the stream coming in from the NE did have this neat wee Giant's Kettle (Jettegryte).] |
 |
| [an odd rectangular alcove-like recess in a hilltop boulder NW of the parking area.] |
 |
| [a strange tree bottom fireplace, but more likely a blowout from a lighting strike heading to ground.] |
By late afternoon after going up & down all four surrounding hilltops as marked in the pictures, I'd found none of those things, only the few oddities in the pictures above, though nothing I could call definitively trollsign, but the lake gets a more than fair amount of hikers, fishermen, and other visitors. There's a residence to the NE, a park convenience store to the NW open a few days a week, campgrounds, and even an amphitheater N of the parking area. I would say there were maybe 20 people tops at one time on the Monday afternoon I was there.
Given the traffic, maybe the sighting photo's a rare hungry/thirsty troll visit to the lake on a slow tourist day, and one would have to assume the troll might instead live nearby but out of the way, like the potential cave entrance over in the canyon to the W of the lake here:
 |
| [this cave is marked with a blue "?" in the satellite photo and a grey stickpin in the topographical map.] |
This could just be an erosive shallow below a solid crown on this canyonside, but then again it could run deeper than that as a potential troll cave. The distance & location would give a troll needed isolation while keeping him within reachable distance of the lake's water & fish. And while it looks accessible in the photo, it is below the top of a pretty steep east facing canyon wall, and would have required a very long walk around and hazardous climb to even approach, but that afternoon there was no way I could've made it there & back before nightfall, plus I was alone sans signal up there in case something happened.
Even if the above cave isn't a troll underhall, there's alot of wilderland up in the Catalinas, and if the troll's been seen in the eastern range of the Rincons, it's alot of potential ground he could be beneath and skulking around on.
Looking at University of Iceland Professor Ármann Jakobsson's broader definition of what a Troll can be (and he's probably considered the foremost Norse Lore troll expert having written The Troll Inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North) -- it's not the D&D Monster Manual's bestiary idea of one, nor a modern naturalist's taxonomy of putting something in its Latinate kingdom/phylum/class checkboxes -- it's more open to variance & interpretation, something of a quality as opposed to a being, and the medieval mind could be seen as more sophisticated in the embrace of this detached matter-of-fact acceptance of a spectrum of the supernatural.
In the Norse Lore there are men & women who become trolls, which could be literal or metaphorical. If this is the metaphorical case of a genetically tall societal outsider with hypertrichosis who chooses isolation rather than struggle for acceptance in a mostly appearance-based judgmental society, then perhaps his trollish lifechoice only reflects that maybe civilization is the trollstead, albeit with the population at large's "standards" othering people (but this is a pretty stretchypants idea for a modern reception paper [and yes, I'm totally "trolling" you with that suggestion]).
There are also men & women who become trolls far less secularly by magical engagement, whether that's through their sinister reputation of magical practice, self/other enchantment to personal advantage, willing/unwilling magical imbuement, or familial heritage of trollish genetic markers.
If I hear of more encounters, I'll probably get back up there for another look and post a follow-up to this, otherwise I have to leave this mythological investigation open. So if you have accounts of The Sonoran Troll, or if you yourself have been looking for him, do post in the comments below!
Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology, field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.
Comments
Post a Comment