I must start with a double-edged apology: One, I may have written part of this story in another essay already, although I looked into the archives and could not find it; and Two, if I did NOT bring that story to you, I apologize all the more. How could I not? What is wrong with me? So forgive me either way.
Ahem. Anyway, this is a story with deep roots, delving into my personal archaeological record way back to 1974 when I was a young, idealistic, and incredibly stupid 20-year-old. I had physically left college – I had already mentally left it a year earlier – to hitchhike up and down and sideways and across America to find some sort of luminous ideal community or heavenly abode (see my book, Dream Weaver, on Amazon and Barnes and Nobel). I did not find it, and I now can readily understand why. To say that I was not worthy of it is an embarrassing understatement, as even now in my harmless old age I could only hope for something of the sort through the infinite mercy and grace of God. But I did have my adventures during that time, and one of them, quite by accident, involved Bigfoot.
In brief – I could go on for a long chapter as I did in the book - I was hitching late at night in central California with a sailor on leave from San Diego on his way home to Walla Walla. We were about to give up and sleep until morning on the side of the highway when we heard a thrashing noise. Looking towards the sound, we saw a large man/ape six to seven feet tall leap from a stand-still over an eight-foot high cyclone fence bordering the road. We heard a high-pitched scream when he landed on the other side, then a bit more thrashing, and then nothing. This memory was made especially clear because the sailor began to insist that we pursue the beast with his jack-knife, because “if we kill it and show it to the world, we’ll be rich and famous!” I was aghast at both the possibility of murder and the risk of being killed ourselves. I was able to talk him down and somehow we went to sleep a bit later and that was the end of it. This story is true, Scout’s honor.
I have never seen or heard Bigfoot again, but just last September or November – I have forgotten which – I heard OF him in a very curious way.
I was staying at our cabin in the UP and drove a few miles north and east to hike the trail to an old, restored lighthouse up from Hurricane River campground. There in the parking lot were two odd – as in dorky or geeky – 40ish- something men milling about their car and a pile of camping and hiking gear. They did not look the outdoor sorts, but what did I know?, and off I went on an hour and a half hike. Much to my puzzlement, the men were still there when I got back, still milling about in what I now understood to be a long moment of confusion. I couldn’t resist, and so put forth the question, “So, you guys going off on the trail? How long you going for?”
They looked at each other in conspiratorial silence, and then one of them offered, “We’re not sure. Maybe this isn’t the best place for us.” The best place for what?, I queried, in what must have been a really sincere manner, because, after a few more looks and a deep breath or two, they ‘fessed up to their motive.
“We’re scouts for a documentary company wanting to do a series on Bigfoot. We’re not sure we hit the right area here.”
“Well,” said I, “what exactly is it that you look for that tells you you’re in Bigfoot country?”
And they knew: “You can see their partial nests under the trees, broken limbs placed in such a way as to mark their territory…and more.”
“Oh,” I probed some more, “and what’s that blow-up rubber canoe you have?”
They grinned. “We’re thinking of paddling our way to Isle Royal. Maybe that’s the best spot.”
Isle Royal was at least a hundred miles away from where we stood, way off in the western portion of Lake Superior, a lake wild enough to sink the Edmond Fitzgerald. I told them with all sincerity and with some considerable intensity that they should absolutely NOT try to canoe to this island unless they wanted to die. I then told them that I fully believed in their quest because I had seen Bigfoot nearly 50 years before in central California. I went on to sketch out the story. They were rapt.
More than rapt. They gave each other that conspiratorial look, and then began to pick up their gear. “We have to get going,” they said before getting back to hoisting their load – including, I could now see, a large camera stand. I understood. In dealings with the mysterious Bigfoot, one goes on such things as coincidence. My story was the nudge from the cosmos that they needed. It was humbling to know that I had been used in such a manner.
Ah yes, coincidence. Less than a year later – only two weeks before this time in which I write – I was back up that way with my son outside Munising. Lunchtime was near, so we decided to stop at the pasty shop that was becoming a familial haunt. Outside, they had a life-size plastic Bigfoot where we, and everyone else, posed for pictures, one attractive woman even sitting provocatively in his lap. The perks of fame. Afterwards, we picked up some groceries at the local and, for some reason, I asked the checkout girl, “Do you think there are Bigfoot here, or is that just a gimmick?”
Diplomatically keeping a straight face, she said, “There are many things in this world that we don’t understand.”
“Oh, I believe there are Bigfoot. I just don’t know about up here. Way back in 1974 I was hitching in California and saw one very clearly.” I followed with a brief summary of my story.
Her detached look changed. “You’ve given me goosebumps. I’ve never seen one, but a lot of people around her have.” I left as we both gave each other knowing nods, as if we were part of a special club of people who really KNEW.
Days later, lunchtime came around again as we drove through Menominee, the southern gateway to the UP. We stopped at a pasty shop again and again found numerous commemorations to Bigfoot. I told the counter girl that the pasty shop in Munising had the statue and such and she told me, “Yeah, Bigfoot is really big up here. They have a big convention on them in the summer. Place is full of these guys.”
Then I understood: In this part of the country, pasties, or meat and rutabaga and/or cabbage pies, are associated with the Upper Peninsula. The UP is now, or at least wants to be, associated with Bigfoot, for reasons real or commercial or both. Pasties and Bigfoot and woods and mosquitoes and a lake big and bad enough to swallow a huge barge, then, are all conceptually held together like meat and rutabaga in folded dough. All of it comes back to the oddly different and the wild, which all points to the UP, which, by the way, is also an area in desperate need of more tourist dollars.
Of course one wonders…money, geeks, documentaries, the willfully gullible…But I know what I saw. How can I say that others have not? What’s more, no less than many leaders in the Catholic Church DO believe in such things as Bigfoot and aliens (which seem to go together), as well as angels and a whole host of demons and daemons, both evil and otherworldly. Some believe in the possibility of faster-than-light travel and of aliens, but more in the otherworld or worlds, or what we might call different dimensions. They know they exist because the ancients have talked of such things in the Bible and elsewhere, and God is not constrained in his creation and in his knowledge. He may do whatever or however he wants, and he may grant the grace (or curse) of special sight into his creation to anyone he wishes.
Overall, though, I have come to this point: from psalm 90, “Seventy is the sum of our years, / or eighty if we are strong, / And most of them are fruitless toil, / for they pass quickly and we drift away.” It is all, all of our shared reality, a shiny leaf, a drop of dew, a spider web dross. We have no idea really, and we pass quickly from our bewildered state into another we seem not to know at all. This is so; this is real. This is more real than Bigfoot or this computer, and we won’t know it and don’t live it, almost none of us, almost not at all. We are finally put like geeks into a blow-up rubber canoe to sail an endless lake to an island where the strange and marvelous exist. Unlike our geeks above, though, we will make no documentary, claim no fame, and, most of all, will have no choice.
Finally, I must add: if you go to the UP, have the pasties. Get the ones with both rutabaga and cabbage if you can, or with rutabaga alone rather than cabbage. Take your picture with Bigfoot. And never stop marveling at the great, seemingly endless lake that will stretch before you.
I must start with a double-edged apology: One, I may have written part of this story in another essay already, although I looked into the archives and could not find it; and Two, if I did NOT bring that story to you, I apologize all the more. How could I not? What is wrong with me? So forgive me either way.
Ahem. Anyway, this is a story with deep roots, delving into my personal archaeological record way back to 1974 when I was a young, idealistic, and incredibly stupid 20-year-old. I had physically left college – I had already mentally left it a year earlier – to hitchhike up and down and sideways and across America to find some sort of luminous ideal community or heavenly abode (see my book, Dream Weaver, on Amazon and Barnes and Nobel). I did not find it, and I now can readily understand why. To say that I was not worthy of it is an embarrassing understatement, as even now in my harmless old age I could only hope for something of the sort through the infinite mercy and grace of God. But I did have my adventures during that time, and one of them, quite by accident, involved Bigfoot.
In brief – I could go on for a long chapter as I did in the book - I was hitching late at night in central California with a sailor on leave from San Diego on his way home to Walla Walla. We were about to give up and sleep until morning on the side of the highway when we heard a thrashing noise. Looking towards the sound, we saw a large man/ape six to seven feet tall leap from a stand-still over an eight-foot high cyclone fence bordering the road. We heard a high-pitched scream when he landed on the other side, then a bit more thrashing, and then nothing. This memory was made especially clear because the sailor began to insist that we pursue the beast with his jack-knife, because “if we kill it and show it to the world, we’ll be rich and famous!” I was aghast at both the possibility of murder and the risk of being killed ourselves. I was able to talk him down and somehow we went to sleep a bit later and that was the end of it. This story is true, Scout’s honor.
I have never seen or heard Bigfoot again, but just last September or November – I have forgotten which – I heard OF him in a very curious way.
I was staying at our cabin in the UP and drove a few miles north and east to hike the trail to an old, restored lighthouse up from Hurricane River campground. There in the parking lot were two odd – as in dorky or geeky – 40ish- something men milling about their car and a pile of camping and hiking gear. They did not look the outdoor sorts, but what did I know?, and off I went on an hour and a half hike. Much to my puzzlement, the men were still there when I got back, still milling about in what I now understood to be a long moment of confusion. I couldn’t resist, and so put forth the question, “So, you guys going off on the trail? How long you going for?”
They looked at each other in conspiratorial silence, and then one of them offered, “We’re not sure. Maybe this isn’t the best place for us.” The best place for what?, I queried, in what must have been a really sincere manner, because, after a few more looks and a deep breath or two, they ‘fessed up to their motive.
“We’re scouts for a documentary company wanting to do a series on Bigfoot. We’re not sure we hit the right area here.”
“Well,” said I, “what exactly is it that you look for that tells you you’re in Bigfoot country?”
And they knew: “You can see their partial nests under the trees, broken limbs placed in such a way as to mark their territory…and more.”
“Oh,” I probed some more, “and what’s that blow-up rubber canoe you have?”
They grinned. “We’re thinking of paddling our way to Isle Royal. Maybe that’s the best spot.”
Isle Royal was at least a hundred miles away from where we stood, way off in the western portion of Lake Superior, a lake wild enough to sink the Edmond Fitzgerald. I told them with all sincerity and with some considerable intensity that they should absolutely NOT try to canoe to this island unless they wanted to die. I then told them that I fully believed in their quest because I had seen Bigfoot nearly 50 years before in central California. I went on to sketch out the story. They were rapt.
More than rapt. They gave each other that conspiratorial look, and then began to pick up their gear. “We have to get going,” they said before getting back to hoisting their load – including, I could now see, a large camera stand. I understood. In dealings with the mysterious Bigfoot, one goes on such things as coincidence. My story was the nudge from the cosmos that they needed. It was humbling to know that I had been used in such a manner.
Ah yes, coincidence. Less than a year later – only two weeks before this time in which I write – I was back up that way with my son outside Munising. Lunchtime was near, so we decided to stop at the pasty shop that was becoming a familial haunt. Outside, they had a life-size plastic Bigfoot where we, and everyone else, posed for pictures, one attractive woman even sitting provocatively in his lap. The perks of fame. Afterwards, we picked up some groceries at the local and, for some reason, I asked the checkout girl, “Do you think there are Bigfoot here, or is that just a gimmick?”
Diplomatically keeping a straight face, she said, “There are many things in this world that we don’t understand.”
“Oh, I believe there are Bigfoot. I just don’t know about up here. Way back in 1974 I was hitching in California and saw one very clearly.” I followed with a brief summary of my story.
Her detached look changed. “You’ve given me goosebumps. I’ve never seen one, but a lot of people around her have.” I left as we both gave each other knowing nods, as if we were part of a special club of people who really KNEW.
Days later, lunchtime came around again as we drove through Menominee, the southern gateway to the UP. We stopped at a pasty shop again and again found numerous commemorations to Bigfoot. I told the counter girl that the pasty shop in Munising had the statue and such and she told me, “Yeah, Bigfoot is really big up here. They have a big convention on them in the summer. Place is full of these guys.”
Then I understood: In this part of the country, pasties, or meat and rutabaga and/or cabbage pies, are associated with the Upper Peninsula. The UP is now, or at least wants to be, associated with Bigfoot, for reasons real or commercial or both. Pasties and Bigfoot and woods and mosquitoes and a lake big and bad enough to swallow a huge barge, then, are all conceptually held together like meat and rutabaga in folded dough. All of it comes back to the oddly different and the wild, which all points to the UP, which, by the way, is also an area in desperate need of more tourist dollars.
Of course one wonders…money, geeks, documentaries, the willfully gullible…But I know what I saw. How can I say that others have not? What’s more, no less than many leaders in the Catholic Church DO believe in such things as Bigfoot and aliens (which seem to go together), as well as angels and a whole host of demons and daemons, both evil and otherworldly. Some believe in the possibility of faster-than-light travel and of aliens, but more in the otherworld or worlds, or what we might call different dimensions. They know they exist because the ancients have talked of such things in the Bible and elsewhere, and God is not constrained in his creation and in his knowledge. He may do whatever or however he wants, and he may grant the grace (or curse) of special sight into his creation to anyone he wishes.
Overall, though, I have come to this point: from psalm 90, “Seventy is the sum of our years, / or eighty if we are strong, / And most of them are fruitless toil, / for they pass quickly and we drift away.” It is all, all of our shared reality, a shiny leaf, a drop of dew, a spider web dross. We have no idea really, and we pass quickly from our bewildered state into another we seem not to know at all. This is so; this is real. This is more real than Bigfoot or this computer, and we won’t know it and don’t live it, almost none of us, almost not at all. We are finally put like geeks into a blow-up rubber canoe to sail an endless lake to an island where the strange and marvelous exist. Unlike our geeks above, though, we will make no documentary, claim no fame, and, most of all, will have no choice.
Finally, I must add: if you go to the UP, have the pasties. Get the ones with both rutabaga and cabbage if you can, or with rutabaga alone rather than cabbage. Take your picture with Bigfoot. And never stop marveling at the great, seemingly endless lake that will stretch before you.
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