A few years before the
1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington, I worked on a
timber-cruising crew near that mountain. We stayed in a barn-like
lodge and ate at a nearby diner. During breakfast one morning,
Harry R. Truman, who owned Harmony Falls Lodge on Spirit Lake, came
in. He was wearing an ancient raincoat and the same wrinkled cap he
wore years later when he told a cameraman, a helicopter pilot and
the world that he’d never leave his mountain. Days later, it
blew.
Nodding to the diner’s proprietor, he poured
himself some coffee and came to our booth. “You fellas must
be the timber cruisers,” he said. He’d obviously had
his morning whiskey. “There’s something you boys should
know. A Big Hairy Guy hangs out in these woods. Someday
you’ll be taping a tree, and a shadow’ll fall on you.
He’ll know you’re fixin’ to log his forest, and
he’ll be mad.”
He sipped his coffee. “I
can show you scratch marks 10 feet high where he tried to get in my
barn. I know when he’s around by the smell. Whew! But my cats
warn me before he gets that close. They go crazy! Edna, my wife,
won’t go out at night, at all. The Big hairy Guy’s
passed up many chances to get me, ‘cause he knows I’m
on his side. You boys, though….” He shook his head.
We figured that Truman was saying he didn’t like
our being there (I couldn’t blame him), while ostensibly
warning us about Sasquatch, as some Native Americans call the
legendary creature. We considered ourselves duly advised on both
counts. But in weeks of beating the brush, we saw no sign of the
Big Hairy Guy, though in that mysterious forest of shadowy glens
and hulking, mossy trees, believing in such a creature
wouldn’t have been much of a stretch.
It could be
the way we timber beasts were living: Our so-called ski-lodge was
nothing but a cavernous wooden frame building with cots lined up,
army-barracks style. To heat water for a shower, we had to build a
roaring fire in a woodstove. It took over an hour to produce enough
hot water for one person taking a short shower. The weather was
cool and rainy the entire time, and after the first day we decided
a shower was optional. Maybe that’s why we never encountered
Bigfoot.
For more than a century, Bigfoot sightings have
been reported all over the Northwest. In 1890, railroad workers in
British Columbia supposedly captured a rock-throwing, apelike
creature they called Jacko. It escaped before anyone photographed
him.
Several sightings have been hoaxes, such as those
engineered by Ray L. Wallace, who ‘fessed up before he died
three years ago. Though his faked footprints and films were
amateurish, many believed they were authentic representations of
something furry and big. His bio-hoax, built on a legend already in
place, was not the first involving a cryptid, a word meaning
“hidden animal,” or creature of unproven existence.
Yeti of the Himalayas and Nessie of Scotland’s Loch Ness are
cryptids.
They lend themselves to bio-hoaxes because
their existence is physically possible, and for reasons that might
be termed romantic or psychological, people want to believe they
exist. Sometimes they do exist. Former cryptids include gorillas —
discovered in 1847, giant pandas — found in1869, Komodo dragons —
spotted in 1912, and giant geckos — found in 1984.
While
Wallace’s motive in fooling people was unclear, several
bio-hoaxes have been perpetrated for political reasons. A bio-hoax
by environmentalists involved planting endangered plants in a
forest scheduled for logging. On the flip side, loggers made sure
one forest harbored no spotted owls by shooting them. This is
perhaps more bio-hit than bio-hoax, though the shooters aided their
“enemy” by killing a barred owl, which threatens
spotted owls through interbreeding.
One rumor had it that
a Bigfoot was shot and secretly buried so “enviros”
wouldn’t find out and demand Bigfoot refuges with connecting
BFRs — Bigfoot runways — a mountain myth no less incredible than
others that persist. It’s interesting to speculate on what
might happen after a confirmed Bigfoot discovery. Personally,
I’d like to celebrate by taking the discoverer to breakfast
at the diner where I met Harry R. Truman. But, of course, the
eatery is buried under millions of tons of volcanic debris. As is,
apparently, Harry, and perhaps — who knows — his Big Hairy Guy.
Chuck Bolsinger is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a
freelance writer in Boring, Oregon.
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