I was watching one of those stupid searching for Bigfoot shows. Every sound in the woods at night...must be Bigfoot! Every body heat infrared image...must be Bigfoot! If one of their cameras they set up falls down....must be Bigfoot! Bigfoot must either be the most intelligent creature on earth or maybe he just doesn't exist.

I was watching one of those stupid searching for Bigfoot shows. Every sound in the woods at night...must be Bigfoot! Every body heat infrared image...must be Bigfoot! If one of their cameras they set up falls down....must be Bigfoot! Bigfoot must either be the most intelligent creature on earth or maybe he just doesn't exist.

Ok. Don't rule this out yet. In '94, I took a job leading hikes in the Northwest (basically Washington state). Half of the people on the trip were wrestlers from Central Washington University. We actually ran into some spooky stuff. At first, I was positive that some deranged lunatic was following us, and I wasn't especially concerned, given the facts that I was with 15 wrestlers and that my co-leader was a survivalist with a Bowie knife. By day three, it was apparent that we were being followed, and we so I used the walkie-talkies to alert the park rangers. They came with two guys from the state patrol and found some weird things. Huge, almost elephant-sized, tracks, pile after pile of rather impolite droppings, and some strange, quasi-religious artifacts--mostly twigs bent into interlocking oval shapes, kind of like the Olympics logo but ten times more convoluted (and disturbing).

"Whoever has been following you," the rangers said, "walks on two legs and seems to have a full belly. Maybe that's why you're still alive."

We laughed, and not five seconds later two of the wrestlers come running into the clearing claiming to have seen a "huge fucking gorilla."

Honestly, I am not sure what local knowledge they have up there, but the state patrol guys and the rangers looked at each other and immediately evacuated us like there was a war on. One of the non-wrestlers (and the hottest hiker on the trip, by the way) said that she left her walking stick made of black oak behind and wanted to get it. These guys didn't care; they forced all of the women into two cars and a truck and sent for a van to get us It was like we were POWs or something. Needless to say, we were freaked out, and waiting there, constantly scanning the forest, was probably the scariest hour of my life.

We were detained in a remote corner of Washington for a few days, and despite being pummeled with questions, the authorities were extremely generous to us. It felt like we were being bribed in a way. On the third morning, I headed back home with my full stipend and a bag of sweet swag.

tl;dr: Don't minimize the Bigfoot narratives as crazy talk.

So, you are saying there is a sweet black oak walking stick, still up there?