FEELING SASSY - My Bigfoot Experience

So, I had a Bigfoot encounter last Summer. At least I am about 97% sure of it. I have tried to talk about it with my friends, as it was a life changing experience only to end up feeling ignored and embarrassed for telling them - as every single person has either chuckled and/or changed the subject as soon as I have finished. I hear a lot of folks who have had a run-in with the Big-Guy get the same reaction when sharing their encounter, so I don’t feel so alone. But I still feel sad mostly because there is something amazing out there that appears to be our inverse. And few care to think about it.

Most people probably think I am a bit crazy anyway. I have been thinking and talking about Bigfoot for a long time, even before it came into vogue - along with Aliens, the Inner Earth Kingdom of Agartha, and the impending socio-economic collapse of the patriarchal-capitalistic system, among other things. I must be endearing or amusing enough because they endure my outspoken curiosity on a regular basis and are still my friends. But I digress.

If you are one of those people who doesn’t believe in Bigfoot, that’s ok. They exist anyway. I have several friends who have had Class A encounters – seen them up close and personal. The big question is not if they are real but What are they? Which begs another big question: What are we?

2020 was the summer of camping. My wife and I found recreating out in Nature was much more fun than laying around eating Ruffles and popping fistfuls of benzos while watching the world implode on our blue screens. Our newfound obsession with the outdoors was inspired by a wild and spontaneous 4 day road-and-tent trip to the Trinity Alps and Mt. Shasta in California. And yes, we did visit the Bigfoot museum in Willow Creek but it was closed due to Covid-19. We also found a very large footprint on Mt. Shasta which added to the magic.

Bigfoot is always on the brain, with me anyways. I had actually found a couple large footprints while hiking in Oregon in previous weeks, and we each had a couple other run-ins with ‘something’ in the woods (besides a big cougar) that left us humbled and much more aware of whose home we were tromping through. We were beginning to discover the thrill of the wild and wanted more.

In August, as all the social upheaval, political theater and pandemic woes were really starting to wear us down, I decided I needed to see a couple of my closest friends up in Washington, even if it was going to be a triple masked affair from the end of their driveway 30 feet away. I just needed to see someone I loved for real.

My wife Kat found a camping site on a tree farm up in the Arlington area off one of those Hippy Camp Apps online. It was cheaper than a hotel to camp, and we were avoiding them anyway because of possible Covid contamination. I was excited to go see my friends, but I kept getting a super creepy intuition about where we were going to stay for those three nights.  However, I dismissed it and chided myself for overreacting, as I am apparently wont to do despite 40 years of therapy.

About a week later, we arrived on the camp site after a long 8 hour drive, hurrying to set up and get dinner on before losing light. The site was about ½ mile off the road, on private property. To get there you needed to enter a code to pass through a big steel gate onto the land.  There was a high ridge to the right of our campsite about 1700 feet tall a ¼ mile away to our right. We looked over a beaver pond about 100 yards in front, and to our left was open space full of bushes about 4 feel tall extending out to the surrounding woods. We parked our truck on the short gravel driveway leading to the site and pitched our tents in front of the truck facing the fire ring. Behind us was rough terrain of trees and bushes leading up to a couple ridges about a ½ mile away that rolled right into the Cascade foothills.  As the fire ring and camp chairs took up a lot of space on the actual campsite, it made sense to sleep on the upper driveway. It was more level as well.

Down below our campsite was another road that led past the beaver pond into many dark acres of old growth cedar forest. It was a stunningly beautiful area, and we felt more than happy to be there.

As the sun started going down the first night, I couldn’t help but notice everything was eerily silent. There wasn’t an insect or a bird sound to be heard anywhere. The air was thick and still. I made a joke there must be a Bigfoot around. It is said that when a Bigfoot is in the area, the whole woods will go silent for whatever reason, in an almost a supernatural way.

I shook my head and thought, ‘maybe Nature is different up here in Washington State’, different at least than in Oregon where we have been living and camping for most of the Summer.

Kat and I cooked, ate dinner, put the dishes away, and settled down to sit by the fire for a time to relax. Occasionally we would hear the ‘ker-plunk’ of the beaver below going about his or her business.  Other than that, the night was uncannily silent and dark. Being stargazers, we patiently waited for their arrival in the firmament. One by one the stars would appear.  Suddenly, we heard a long plaintive, wailing sound behind us. It was far away in the distance but loud enough to be recognized as unmistakably similar to the famous Ohio Sounds, thought to be the one of the clearest recordings of a Bigfoot to date. I turned to Kat and said, “Well Bigfoot is here! Hear that? Remind me to play you a recording when we go home.” She looked at me and didn’t say anything and I said, “I am serious. That is a Bigfoot.” She nodded and said, “I believe you!” I don’t think either of us were frightened per se because it was so far away. But I will admit between the eerie silence and hearing their song, I did beam the flashlight around camp several times, feeling more than a bit uneasy.

We could see stars rising up into the sky over the ridge to our right. But then some of them slowly started moving around, from side to side and across the top of the ridge. We both noticed the moving ‘stars’ at the same time and said, “WTF?”. I said something like, ‘Well it looks like we aren’t alone’. Kat nodded and we just sat there, speechless, watching UFOs dance in the sky. The light show went on all three nights we were there, by the way. I have no idea what they were, but we were indeed curious observers.

The next afternoon, we arrived back to our campsite after a day of visiting a couple friends. Buoyed by the year’s first social interactions and the prospect of some grilled hot dogs, we settled into camp, feeling grateful for the bounty of Nature surrounding us.  As darkness descended, with a fire lit and dinner well on its way, we enjoyed a light balmy breeze and the sounds of happy crickets and birds preparing to roost. A heron flew by and we could hear the wind on its wings. As night thickened, an occasional owl was heard in the distance. The night sounds felt reassuring and normal, and we dreamed out loud about buying a piece of land with a big beaver pond on it. What could be better? We stoked the fire as we watched the light show over the ridge to our right and sat until the moon rose big and bright, and came to shine upon the pond below. We could hear the beavers get to their good work, as they apparently do in extra fervor under the full moon.

The third night is when shit got weird.

Earlier in the day, we took the dogs out to the river near Index, WA -  a favorite old haunt of mine I wanted to share with Kat. The sun was out and we walked at length along the banks of the river into the surrounding forest. By the time we arrived back at camp, my little dog, a shitzu mix, was so tired he was falling over. I asked Kat if something was wrong with him, “Should we take him to the vet?”. I was concerned, as I had never seen him like this before. He couldn’t even sit up. She assured me he just needed to sleep, so I put him in the tent and zipped up the mosquito flap, then got to work on dinner. The dog part is important because during the encounter, any encounter for that matter, he would usually bark and scream like a banshee. That night he was out like a rock until the next morning.

We got the fire going as night approached. I started to feel a lot of anxiety come on - which isn’t unusual - but this particular flavor of it was different. It didn’t help that there were literally no Nature sounds around us as we got dinner cooking. I wasn’t really hungry and actually started feeling kind of sick to my stomach, but like a trooper I ate dinner anyway because steak  can’t be turned down. I beamed the flashlight around camp several times during and after dinner, hoping to catch some eyeshine and validate the awful feeling that we were being watched. Not wanting to concern Kat, I kept the growing sense of discomfort to myself. I was secretly dreading going to bed that night and tried to talk Kat into staying up late with me, but she was also wiped from the day and wanted to go to bed early.

Ugh, I just felt so unnerved. I reluctantly went into my tent, not tired at all! Well, I thought I  could maybe read myself to sleep while listening to a relaxation CD on headphones – anything to get my mind off of what I was feeling. My dog was a blob to my side and Kat and our other dog nestled into their tent right next to us. They are on the same nightly medication regime and go to sleep together. We often retire to separate beds because one of us snores, I won’t say who (but it’s not me). The anxiety eventually gave in to sleep and I fell out curled up to my dog, wires in my ears and a book in my hands.

I couldn’t have been asleep long when I was startled awake, hearing a very loud Whoooo-oo! I felt like a bolt of lightening had shot through my body. Whatever it was, it must have been just down the road from the beaver pond about 150 yards away. A second Whoooo-oo, exactly like the first, cut through the night like a whip. It sounded somewhat like an owl - but only if an owl was 12 feet tall and had tuba-sized lungs! There was a third incisive Woooo-oo and then deafening silence, except for the light snoring one tent over.

Ok, I kinda knew what made those sounds but kinda didn’t want to admit it. Denial is a powerful sedative, and strangely I fell back asleep soon thereafter.

Next thing I knew, I found myself fully awake on high alert. I felt profoundly sick to my stomach with my heart beating in my throat. I was paralyzed. Something was very wrong. Then I heard the first footstep. It was right outside of my tent no more that 2 feet away. Something bipedal and very, very big was moving outside my tent and trying to be stealth about it. Then another step. And another, a moment later.  I dared not make a move or a sound, so I took to yogic breathing through my skin, lest it hear me. I tried to tell myself it was a bear, but even in my trauma-addled reptilian brain, which was on fire at that moment, I knew a bear would be making more clunky noises than this. Whatever this was, it was trying to be sneaky.

Another step, crunching into the gravel….

To say I was scared would not come close to the feeling I was experiencing. My animal body took over and it was shaking and immobilized at the same time.  I was pretty sure I was going to start barfing uncontrollably which honestly may be the only thing more terrifying to me than a 12 foot apeman inches away from my head. After about 15 minutes of listening to this thing outside of my tent, I got the nerve up to casually grab my backpack for an anti-nausea medication. I figured I would rather be ripped to shreds than vomit, so I took my chances and went for a pill. After that folks, I can’t tell you what happened because I must have passed out.

The next morning I woke up and still had my clothes on and all my limbs, which I thought was a good thing. My dog was alive and well, ready to meet the day. I put my shoes on and emerged from the tent. There were no noticeable footprints in the gravel outside my tent, but then all the gravel in the camp area was packed down hard. I tried to re-create the noise I heard on the gravel by walking with heavy steps, but it was so compact I barely made a sound at all - and I am an Amazon. The dogs ran around playing while we made breakfast making no noise on the ground as they moved about so whatever it was I heard in the night had to have been a very large Being, even while trying to be ninja.

I told Kat what had transpired. One of the reasons I married her is that she believes me, and after a lifetime of generally feeling discounted, that means a lot to me. She asked me, “Why didn’t you wake me up?” The idea of crying out for help in the night never even occurred to me. The only thing on my mind at the time was to be non-existent.

We drove home back to Central Oregon that day. I was glad to get the hell out of there to be honest. While I am obsessed with Bigfoot, and it would be most excellent to see one on the side of the road as I pass by in a very large, fast moving vehicle, I would rather not have another encounter in the middle of the night with 3 millimeters of nylon the only thing between them and me puking and shitting my brains out in terror. But that is just me. Kudos to those balls-of-steel who purposely go after them for whatever reason, even though I think Bigfoot should be left alone.

Later that day, as we crossed back into Oregon, I could smell smoke and I started to panic, even though Kat didn’t pick up on it for a while. My animal body seized up, something was very wrong. Soon an orange-grey haze was visible on the horizon. We thought it must be coming up from California. I felt incredibly uneasy. I am one of those highly sensitive people whose physical and non-physical senses make life very uncomfortable. Even with the faintest whiff of fire in the air, my lungs started burning.

The next day, a devastating fire broke out in our area burning down towns and thousands of acres of forest about 15 miles away. Many people lost their homes and their lives. Countless trees and animal habitats were wiped out. I can barely survive the thought of the impact it had on the Natural world. For the next two and a half weeks, we were stuck inside our apartment with nowhere to escape to. Forest fires were burning out of control all over the Pacific Northwest. The air was so toxic, opening the front door made me sick. I couldn’t even make it to our car to drive away, even if we had a place we could go. I had never gone through a natural disaster such as this. It was a horrifying experience for both of us. My unprocessed encounter with Bigfoot was put on hold as a new survival challenge took center stage. We were on red alert, poised to evacuate for the next few weeks with all our essential belongings stacked at our front door. The fear was that the fire could jump into our town on a high wind. Fortunately, the fire was contained a few weeks later and we survived, at least physically unscathed. In the back of my mind through it all, Bigfoot lurked.…

 I will say this: Even though the Bigfoot encounter was a bit traumatic, I continue to have an almost a romantic obsession about them. The relationship however is unrequited. Somehow, they always seem to elude us, like they are one step ahead. If humans see them, it is mostly on their terms. Whether they are space aliens, inter-dimensional beings with ESP, an ape, a relic hominid, or just another tribe of people as many Native people say, they are extremely intelligent to the degree they generally escape our harassment. They live outside the bounds of man, according to their own rules, and don’t seem to like or trust us much (if at all).

 (I don’t either, if I am being honest.)

The thought of Bigfoot running around the mountains and valleys of the interior, with intimate knowledge of how to live in an unconstructed world, gives me hope. Their freedom is linked to mine in some way. In the perilous landscape of my neurotic mind, there lives the Bigfoot of my imagination– defiant, uncorrupted and ancient, calling me back into the wild mycelium of The Living System of which I am a part. My link with them is the part of me that can never be possessed or domesticated. Whatever they are is a mystery that walks between the worlds of what is not known and what could change us forever. That is why I love Bigfoot and will continue to flirt with the possibility of an encounter again.