Sightings

People from back home have asked me what the deal is with Bigfoot out here. It’s kind of difficult to write about. The problem is plurality. Bigfeet don’t sound right, but Bigfoots is also awkward. Sasquatch isn’t much better when you say Sasquatches. This is all important, because I’ve seen three of them. I’ll discuss them individually.

The first was in Elbe, a mountain village known for its ample Bigfoot habitat. He was in a bar, sitting several bar stools down from me. The second time I saw a Bigfoot, he was stocking produce at a local grocery store in Tacoma.

The third time I saw Bigfoot was deep in the forested mountains of North Cascades National Park. Although this might sound like the most likely encounter, what made it unlikely was he was leading a pack of backpacking cub scouts in a round of early morning stretching and calisthenics before starting their hike.

I’m going to have to ask you to trust me on this, because I did not get pictures of any of the three. Neither the one in the bar nor the one in the produce section was giving off a friendly vibe, and I lacked the courage to try to snap a picture out of fear of angering them and provoking a charge. The one leading the scouts was certainly doing his part as a good citizen, but the mere fact that all of these children were complying with his orders to exercise prior to strapping on their backpacks and hiking several miles through the mountains told me that he wasn’t one to be messed with, either.

Each of these three individuals were considerably taller and hairier than what I’ve known as homo sapiens. Certainly, if I had seen them at a distance in the misty forest and they weren’t wearing any people clothes, I would have absolutely thought them to be a different species. Seeing them in the situations that I did, it was still questionable.

Bigfoot lore is something Washington shares with Oregon, and you’ll see plenty of signage, some business names and a fair number of statues paying him homage in both states. I’ve included a couple of pictures of some statues at local businesses, which are a pretty fair representation of the three I saw, minus the people clothes.