Saturday, November 12, 2016

Waiting for Sasquatch

I walk along the fringe separating the sixth fairway from the thick scrub of woods on the eastern edge of Surfside Golf course, occasionally shining my anemic flashlight into the paths left by golfers looking for lost balls. It is well past dusk, the wife and dogs walk ahead of me down the middle of the fairway. The moon is a crescent in the dimly lit sky, next to a faint Venus.
Of all the places on the planet where a Sasquatch might be, this location should be one of the most likely in the world. (click for more)

According to the BFRO database, (THE most complete and diligent forum for investigated reports of Hairy Humanoids) Washington State has 622 investigated reports, with Pierce County having the highest number in the state (75) with King County being 2nd at 46. Grays Harbor County, just up the coast has 42 reports.

At this writing, I am in Pacific County at my beach cabin, but my main home is right next to the border between King and Pierce, the two counties with the highest incidence of Bigfoot accounts in the entire world.

Why do I think my current location is ripe for an encounter? Two reasons: 1). Just about a mile from where my flashlight punches into the dank woods lives a man who claims to have a family of Sasquatches who he shares sandwiches with, and 2). this place FEELS Bigfooty.

That wholly unscientific assessement is a weak argument, yes, but the entire supposition that we share the planet with a giant, hairy humanoid that is so ghost-like that it can almost never be seen much less photographed is a visit to Crazytown in itself.

My wife yells at Dog number two because I have let it off the leash and the dog furrows into the wet bushes. My focus on sleuthing is interrupted by her worry, and I cannot argue with her because we HAVE seen bears here just last summer. At that moment, when I turn to see where she is in the dark
I see a light across the fairway, on hole number 5.

Its another human, with a flashlight and I am surprised. On our frequent night time golf course sorties, I have never seen another person here and so I stop behind a big tree and watch them walk beyond the tee box and out of view back toward the clubhouse. An employee out checking sprinkler heads or...?

Dog number 2 is back out running toward the sand traps in the sixth green and so I follow, wondering if there might be a nice, fat footprint in the perfect, freshly dampened substrate.
No such luck, Chuck. I found the telltale cloven-hooved tracks of a deer, though, arguably an important Bigfoot food source, and I saw the fresh prints dog 2 had made.

It's not THAT big, is it?

I tried to mash my own boot into the edge of the trap, finding it rather firm underfoot. Bigfoot prints have been found in sand before, most notably in the dunes near Tillamook, Oregon, but these traps are raked regularly so my small hopes are further diminished.


I am angling toward a dark corner of the seventh tee box here, a place I have passed numerous times during golf rounds and wondered about for its perfect concealment. From a place just inside the scrub one can see the all the way to the clubhouse and down the expanse of both the ninth and sixth fairways, basically the entire golf course perimeter on two sides.

My fantasy is to come here at night with a Sasquatch researcher/friend, with just a sack of snacks, a couple of comfy lawn loungers and sleeping bags, and a night vision/flir equipped video camera. We will make no fire, we will be very quiet for the most part, but will àlso allow ourselves to be noticed from time to time by any wildlife by chatting normally.

MopFoot, leaving the scene of a mess

In this way, according to my acqauintances in the Bigfoot Research world, our chances of an encounter are dramatically increased.

I could jam some apples into the the stubs of broken tree branches, or, as in the case of my nearby contact, leave peanut butter sandwiches on a tray, but that requires more time and patience.

Wait, WHAT? 

In the ongoing field of hairy hominid research, patience IS the key. The hot trend revolves around 'habituation', which is just how any serious study of primates in wild places is done.

Go to where they are seen/Bring something they like to eat/Leave, but return later and watch quietly/Repeat often. Also, do it at night.

Out on the beach, proper, I walk each day and contemplate our concepts of time. Its easy to do in a place that is so devoid of the markers of time. Sky meets Ocean, meets Sand. On overcast days, all are shades of gray. The wind blows swift, low curtains of sand grains against my legs and Sandpipers flit through exceedingly rapid tumults in swarms like a single organism. This feels timeless.

Humans think in terms of hours. How long has it been since I ate something? How long until the sun goes down? How many days until the weather gets cold. These signs, hunger, aversion to cold or darkness are built in to our genes through evolution. They are preciously short indicators as opposed to the forces that sculpt the earth. This is probably why Global Warming is such a hard sell to the general public. We, as untrained, short-lived citizens, have difficulty with the concepts of geologic time.

And some suggest, as a growing number of Sasquatch researchers believe, our quarry is particularly long-lived, numbering the days into the mid-one hundred rountinely.  Wild speculation, of course, but some species of turtles live well past 100 years and Bowhead Whales (also Greenland Sharks) have an AVERAGE lifespan of 200.

Is it conceit that makes us think we can lure a giant forest man-ape into meaningful contact with a P,B&J or just a special brand of crazy?

Look, I TOLD you..NO WHEAT BREAD, dude.

My contact here at the beach believes that Sasquatches do not like wheat bread. He believes that the sandwiches he makes, Peanut butter and jelly on WHITE bread are the best food to offer Bigfoot, through trial and error. The wheat bread sandwiches were ignored while the white bread treats were scarfed up, on one occasion, in broad daylight, just paces away, him on his covered deck, an 8 foot tall Bigfoot behind the corner of an old truck canopy, they both enjoyed their lunch.

Last July, I spotted him standing outside his snazzy 4WD coupe across the street from Jacks Country Store and pulled in to chat with him. I am keeping his identity on the down low because I think its best, though he is a fairly open book about his experiences. In fact, most of what I know about him I learned from the internet and the BFRO. I will call him R.


R contacted the BFRO with the wild story of his ongoing relationship, and investigators converged here to see for themselves. Their verdict: R is telling the truth.

On the street corner, R is talking with an older man, smoking a cigarette and being animated. He is tall, a big man even, with longish hair and beard. He favors sleeveless sweatshirts that show off his upper arm tattoo.

I try not to act too pushy, but I want to know everything I can learn about his visitors.
'Ehh...they dont come around as much during the summer when everbody comes to the beach.'
I am supressing my bullshit meter now, and he continues, 'but I found a big footprint on the side of an embankment by the house the other day.'

This is a far cry from his online claim of hearing and seeing a Sasquatch try to speak an apparent name.

R rambled for an additonal twenty minutes about recent positive changes in his life and and I knew any useful information was not going to surface, so I handed him my business card (carpentry) and asked him to email if he could about having me stop by to see his situation.

Maybe he feels his 15 minutes of public adoration are done now that the BFRO people have backed him up, so having a fan club is less of a draw now.

I am on my own, then, and this is what one of those investigators, Scott Taylor, told me.
'Just go out in your own backyard at night and wait quietly.....they will come to you.'
'I, ah, tried to reason..with you people...but, ah..Obamafoot OUT!'




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