 The story begins with a mystical elk on the beach running at Julie  and jumping over her. The scenes genesis was in a real event. One  summer, when Suzanne Marie and Janine Doyon were just toddlers, they  were on the Manzanita beach with their mother, director Jane  Beaumont Hall. The children were a hundred feet away playing in the  sand. Suddenly, from out of nowhere a huge Roosevelt Elk came  running down the beach straight for the girls. "There was nothing I  could do," says Hall. "Time stood still as I saw the Elk run towards  the girls and then suddenly swerve around them. The elk ran into the  ocean and swam out past the breakers. It was an amazing experience.  I dont think I had time to be scared for the girls and the elk was  such a magnificent creature." Hall remembered that scene when she  and Richard Doyon wrote the screenplay. Both the elk on the beach  and the elk swimming in the ocean were written into the script.