CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE      "THE WISDOM OF BIGFOOT"  latest novel by John Svenkeson

SAMPLE:  THE WISDOM OF BIGFOOT

Chapter 1

Near the top of a bluff, overlooking a sharp bend in the river, sat three objects.

The first object, an aged, slanting, cottonwood tree. Its bark broken, peeling away from the trunk, revealing a charred burn scar left by lightning decades ago. Its nearly leafless branches, twisted and worn, appear like tendrils towering high, stretching to sink claws into the meat of the sky as if it could pull itself even higher. Tallest of the surrounding trees it stands defining the limits of the valley’s horizon.

The second object, timeless with age, a massive worn granite boulder, sitting precisely in the spot where it was deposited by the melting of the glaciers long ago. Wind and water through the millennia had swept clean all surrounding lesser materials, revealing its solid nature. As with the cottonwood, this boulder was of a kind typically found along the bluffs and coulees of the upper St. Croix River.  

The third object was far from typical, neither in this part of the valley, nor anywhere else. The third object was the creature, sitting quietly between the cottonwood and the boulder. Older than the cottonwood, not so ancient as the stone, this creature was paradoxically, both well known to man, and a complete and continuing mystery.

Bigfoot.

Bigfoot sat silent and motionless in the bright sunshine on this warm September day. Unnatural as it might seem, of the three objects perched on the bluff, the cottonwood, the boulder, and the creature, somehow the third attracted the least amount of attention. People passing on the path below might take note of the great old cottonwood because of it shear height, the threatening tilt of its weighty trunk, or the pronounced burn mark along its gnarled form. They might also notice the boulder, such a massive smooth chunk of granite, perhaps considering it for an attractive place to someday sit, should they happen to muster the ambition to make the climb up the bluff. Unbeknownst to all, their eyes would involuntarily pass right over the creature sitting between, without pause, because there was literally nothing about the Bigfoot that would catch their eye. 

Indeed, the opposite effect was in play. There was much about the creature that was intended to force the eye of any predator away. The physical characteristics of his fur protected him from preying eyes. Due to this, the natural reaction of any observer, when encountering the creature’s visage, would be to avoid eye contact with the image. This effect was built into the very complexion of the creature to avoid attention.

It was in Bigfoot’s nature to hide.

This natural camouflage went great measures beyond simply blending into the background. The unique capability for disguise lay in the basic physics of its coat. This species fur had adapted, through natural selection, need driven mutation if you will, or by God’s given design if you prefer, to the quintessence for concealment. When nervous about being seen, which was essentially at most times, its fur would actively shed incident light, in a random diffused image, instead of clear reflection. With its fur in this stealth mode, which was its defensive state, continuous gyrations at the molecular level, on the surface structure of each hair, scattered the light, varying its color, blending its shades, breaking the lines, and effectively causing the depth and definition of the shapes and shadows to constantly and rapidly shift. This microscopic shifting of molecules produced an image that, by design, conflicted with the basic goals of any viewer’s optic nerves and senses; that goal being to try to bring the creature’s form into focus. There was no consistent reflection of light off the surface of the creature. No clear features or edges existed to be brought into frame. It was hard to look upon.

The subsequent effect of this phenomenon was to cause any predator’s attention to subconsciously shift toward any other objects available, within sight, that were easier to bring into focus. Any prying eyes would inadvertently seek other objects instead, thereby avoiding the discomfort caused by trying to focus on the creature’s image. To look upon the creature could literally be said to be repelling to the eyes. It was the ultimate in evolutionary methods of disguise; Steps above the chameleon, the cuttlefish, or the peacock flounder. But then, Bigfoot was much bigger than a chameleon, cuttlefish, or flounder, presenting a much more difficult body to hide, so nature had given him a much more elaborate system.

Not truly invisible, but essentially unnoticeable, he sat. As still as the tree he sat, no; the tree swayed with the wind. As still as the boulder he sat, almost, for days on end. With unlimited patience he sat, with scant sense of the passing of time, and centuries of practice, motionless, soaking in every detail presented by the slowly changing view before him.

Meanwhile nothing or no one took notice of him.

Such was the habit of the Bigfoot. 

  Compared to the peaceful scene at the top of the bluff, down near the valley’s base was relative chaos. A man trod heavily in the vicinity of the river bank, forcing his way through the thick brush in a low boggy area that stood between him and his desire to follow the river upstream. Though the man was no stranger to the woods, and considered himself quite capable in the outdoors, for truly he was more than capable by human standards, it was a hectic scene compared to the sublime tranquility of the stillness above. The man, Joe Danno, as was his usual on a nice autumn day, was making his way through the woods faithfully pursuing his persistent hobby. Joe was searching for Bigfoot.

  Bigfoot had recognized the man immediately upon his noisy arrival. He had recognized the sound of the engine in Joe’s Jeep, as he drove up and parked it on the end of the dirt track.  He had recognized the sound that Joe’s Jeep door made when he opened it, and again the louder noise that the door made when he slammed it shut. It was not that these sounds were overly distinctive. It was just that Bigfoot had heard these same sounds so many times now that they had become cataloged in his impeccable memory. His sharp eyes also recognized Joe’s camouflaged clothing and the short dark hair ringing the bottom edge of his camouflaged hat. These sounds, along with the usual glint of sunlight off the bright silver of his wrist watch, and the metal rim of his sun glasses, announced that Joe was again back in these woods. When the wind shifted and blew up the bluff to where Bigfoot could catch the scent, it unnecessarily confirmed the sighting.

Bigfoot sat very still and watched Joe.  

A dried leaf broke free from a nearby tree and the westerly breeze sent it drifting across Bigfoot’s field of view. He watched that too.

               Sitting there, he reflected back to the last time he had seen Joe come to this valley. It had been only days ago; within this same lunar cycle. He knew where Joe had made camp the last time he was in this area. He considered this information, and the probability of Joe camping in that same location. He thought the chances to be high, so he contemplated moving. Of course, he would not be moving until the valley grew a bit darker, allowing more secrecy to do so. Until then he sat very still.

  Joe paused in his trek, removed his sun glasses, and brought his binoculars into place as he scanned the ridge above him, tweaking the focus slightly, using the charred slanted tree trunk near the crest as a target. It proved to be a good target to use for adjusting the optics. He held there a moment as he examined the details, bringing the tree into sharp focus, zooming in on the rough bark and the obvious remains of the fire. Then he moved on toward the large boulder next to the charred tree trunk, pausing his attention briefly upon the obscure object sitting in between. Whatever it may be, it was somewhat fuzzy and it refused to yield any detail even to his expensive eyepiece, no matter how he adjusted the thumb wheel. Impossible to discern that object from that distance, he moved on, deciding it to be uninteresting.

He focused instead on the boulder. It also came easily into focus, but it too held nothing of note. Returning his attention to the middle object, Joe again fiddled with the center focus wheel, but the object remained indistinct. He played with the individual adjustment on the left eye piece. Still the object revealed no more detail. Lowering the binoculars, he stared up at the ridge with his naked eyes, squinting to improve his vision.

Though middle aged, his eyesight was still excellent. His eye doctor had told him that apparently his eyesight was actually improving with age, it tested better than it had during his last visit. But the object was too far away and Joe was getting a slight headache from the prolonged attempt. He lowered his eyes and forcibly blinked several times, at the same time pinching the corners of the bridge of his nose to relieve the eye strain. He shrugged, replaced the lens caps on the field glasses, and turned his attention away, continuing his scuffle with the brush, heading up the river.

  Bigfoot watched Joe leave. 

He also saw two more leaves drift by and a grey squirrel burying some acorns.

Joe stopped his hike and sat on a fallen log near the river’s edge, so that he could pick some burrs free from his shirt sleeve. No sooner had he come to rest, then he noticed that his left pant leg was also covered with several clumps of the same nuisance. He sighed and began the tedious task of plucking them loose. In some lucky cases, a few of the burrs came free in a large group, or could be brushed off with a quick swipe of his hand. But, most of them he had to pick out individually, digging as deep as he could into the thick cloth with his chewed off fingernails, and pulling cloth fibers free along with each burr. He thought about just ignoring them, but he knew from experience that leaving them would only make the task more difficult later. He was a patient methodical man, he was outdoors, and the weather was beautiful, so he decided to relax, sit back, and enjoy the mindless effort, rather than cuss himself for again not noticing, and stumbling into, the plant that had donated so many of its nasty little seeds for him to involuntarily carry and distribute.

“I guess I am just doing my job spreading these things around so that they can sprout more plants and prosper. Then I can run into even more of them next year,” he murmured as he scratched at some particularly stubborn burrs buried deep in the seam of his shirt. “Beggar’s lice, I hope the birds eat every last one of you.” He threw the last couple of burrs into the dark golden-brown swirls of the river’s current flowing below his feet, “and the fish can have some too.” With that frustration ended, he decided, for the moment, that nothing could be better than sitting right where he was and watching the river roll by, while consuming his small trail lunch.

Trail lunch was a common occurrence for Joe, having over the past decades, hiked and camped around much of the Midwestern United States, in pursuit of his hobby. The hobby of searching for Bigfoot required imagination, patience, perseverance, and lots of trail mix. 

In his youth he admittedly had been more ambitious and quite diligent in his approach to the hunt. He used to strategically plan and execute the search by measuring and marking off the target areas, on his collection of many maps, into grids, categorizing each zone, assigning probability values to each based on his perceived likelihood of success. These probabilities were based upon the calculated sums of weighted factors attributed to each zone, according to knowledge gained through collecting and studying every scrap of literature that he could find on the subject. 

The size of his personal Bigfoot library alone qualified him as an expert on the topic. Over the years, he had gathered stacks of information; clippings of reported sightings; published articles; books; documentaries. He critically vetted the credibility of each newfound piece of evidence. Based on that vetting, he would then adjust the probabilities assigned to the pertinent zones in his master charts to correspond with whatever characteristics of Bigfoot’s behavioral and habitual data that he had gleaned from these reports. If anybody knew where to look for Bigfoot, it was Joe Danno. In truth, he did consider himself an expert.

That thought, at times, made him smile with more than a little self-deprecation…he was an expert in what? Finding something that had never been found? The only true expert in that field would be the first person to produce bona fide proof.

Over the years he had searched a good share of the upper Mississippi River Basin. His search had begun at a young age, camping along the Fox River, the Wisconsin river, the Black, the Rock, the Chippewa, the Minnesota, the Missouri, the Cannon, the Zumbro, the Rum, and countless others, on so many occasions. Today he was back in the St. Croix valley; because frankly, he liked the St. Croix valley.

 Introspectively he had to admit that he had reached the point in his life, and the point in the pursuit of his hobby, where he felt he could be a little more selective. He felt that, after so many years with no results, if he was so likely to be unsuccessful in his search, then he would at least search and fail in places where he really enjoyed looking. One of his favorite places to face another disappointing unsuccessful excursion was the upper St. Croix.

Oh, he had not completely given up hope. Every time he was back out in the woods he found himself, if not overly ambitious, still once again, genuinely interested in the search. Today was no different.

He climbed a rise to come upon a small clearing in the woods, with some suitably level ground exposed to enough sunlight to have grown a nice cushion of grass. He recognized this spot as the same in which he had camped previously. He swung his backpack down off his shoulders and pulled his one-man camouflaged tent from its usual place, spread out a ground cloth, and set up camp for the night.

  There were certain assumptions that Joe had made long ago that governed his routines. And he was a man governed by routines. The obvious one was that to find Bigfoot you had to get out into the wilderness. To get out into the wilderness you had to hike deep into the woods. To get deep into the wilderness you had to backpack. This meant backpacking in and camping overnight, so that, in turn, you could backpack further into the woods the following day. The weak logic behind this sometimes caused him to smile. True wilderness was always, at least, a two-day hike from anywhere. Deep woods excursions were necessary, he was fairly certain, because, as even the uninitiated searcher might assume, Bigfoot was not going to be found anyplace frequented by man. That seemed self-evident. According to lore, they were shy creatures that generally avoided man and populated areas. Any serious search required thinking like the creature and getting out and away from the crowds. As with any successful hunter the application of stealth and wilderness cunning, paying attention to such details as noise, wind direction, smells, and various other signs of nature, was mandatory. To not pay special attention to these details meant certain failure. 

The irony was not lost on him, of course, that decades of paying special attention to all of those special details had also resulted in failure.

The same logic led Joe to private land when he could get permission to search there. Private land allowed him to access some of the more remote, less traveled, areas. Often times he found himself on someone’s land which showed little or no sign of ever seeing human traffic. These were the times when he found himself most hopeful of success. But, those tracks of land, no matter how remote and steeped with promise, had yielded no better results than he would have had searching a local city park.

Mind you he had spent a lot of time searching public lands also, but modern-day state and federal parks had so many restrictions governing where one could camp, and where one could hike, that they substantially limited the area he could cover. Those public areas to which he did have access would often be crowded with other visitors to the park. This violated rule number one of how to find Bigfoot, he had to get away from the people.

Searching on private land, while it offered isolation, did have one common drawback. Accessing private land, both out of courtesy and concern for safety, required that he request permission from the land owner. Requesting permission necessitated providing an explanation of why he wanted said permission. Long ago he had learned that it could be beneficial to his cause if he were ready and willing to spontaneously tailor the context of his request. Instead of straight out asking the land owner for allowance to roam his property in search of Bigfoot, he usually went with an explanation that was a little less specific, and certainly less prone to judgement. Through experience he had found that there were two possible responses if he offered a straight forward request to look for Bigfoot; Either the request was met with sly smiles, rolling eyes, and shaking heads, followed by a denial of his request because they did not want a goofball wandering around their property; or the landowner’s eyes might light up as he became all excited about the possibility of a bigfoot search, followed by the owner’s insistence on joining him in the hunt. Neither of these results suited Joe’s goals.

Instead, he would commonly ask if he might be permitted access so that he could include that particular property in his ongoing “wildlife” study. This approach definitely produced fewer funny looks. He had used this approach most often, rehearsing it to near perfection. He referred to it internally as his W.B.B; Wildlife Biology Biographer approach. Most landowners gobbled this ploy right up; anything to help mother nature. If he humbly declared that he had come hence on the noble cause of recording the life story of the animals native to the area, describing that particular part of the world from the animal’s point of view, speaking up for those who could not speak for themselves; he was in business.

However, that ploy, though often well accepted was not foolproof. It could be tricky. He had to be a quick study, instantly reading the body language and attitude of the proprietor to decide if the W.B.B was the right approach to gaining access. For should he guess wrong, the land owner might tell him to get lost, pointing out in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want any tree hugging, animal loving, pot smoking activists telling him what he could and could not do with his own land. For those people, if he recognized their tenor in time, he went with his second approach; the W.H.S., Woodsmen Hunter Scientist. This usually required some stories of his lumberjacking days as a youth, or tales of the trophy buck that he had bagged not far from this very location, all true mind you. Over the years he had become quite adept at reading the character of the land owner at first glance and adjusting his cover story accordingly. He had found it fairly predictable that the farther he was from the tall buildings, the cities, the better the odds of W.H.S. being accepted over the W.B.B. 

He rationalized that he didn’t need feel guilty in either case for the small deception, because there was more than a grain of truth in either approach. The main side effect of both tactics was that it forced him, out of conscience, to actually keep elaborate notes of the wildlife that he did encounter on these treks, just in case the proprietor eventually questioned him on his results. That side effect was also a major benefit to him in that this gave him something to do during his otherwise fruitless Bigfoot hunting trips; something that actually yielded tangible results. It added method to his madness. He was a methodical man.

Producing this carefully cataloged search log felt like productive work. Unlike his true mission of trying to find Bigfoot, which to date had yielded nothing.

So, it came about over the years that Joe had compiled quite an impressive detailed diary of his encounters with the upper Mississippi river basin wildlife. His sightings of the common animals were all cataloged and categorized; white tailed deer, raccoons, beaver, coyote, opossum, skunk, muskrat, loons, ducks of all variety, porcupine, mink, vultures, and geese, along with scores of others. Recently becoming more common were the wild turkey, bald eagle, sand hill crane, and trumpeter swan. Occasionally he made the rare sightings of black bear, osprey, otters, bobcat, lynx, falcons, wolves, moose, martins, and even once a cougar. It was quite extensive. His journal had grown to such a volume that he wondered if he should somehow make all of this data available to a local university or if the DNR might be interested.

Today’s trip was on public land, not a designated park, but a little-known stretch of state land. It lay north of the early lumber towns that had grown along the river banks back in the days when harvested pine logs had clogged the river on their way downstream to the mills. He seldom ran into other people on this land, which suited the first requirement for bigfoot hunting, and it was easy to access, which suited Joe’s requirement for this weekend.

Chapter 2

It was nearly dark by the time he finished setting up camp. He wanted to get an early start in the morning and he didn’t feel like carrying water up from the river to extinguish a fire. Instead he left the wood that he had gathered stacked and waiting for the breakfast fire in the morning. In the near dark he crawled into his tent, which was only slightly bigger than his sleeping bag. His sleeping bag, in turn, was only slightly bigger than Joe’s six-foot four frame.

 His camping equipment was geared toward backpacking. It packed small, carried light, and kept a person mostly dry and warm; as long as the weather was not too wet and cold.  The tent and bag were not necessarily meant for comfort, however, Joe was still in fine shape for his nearly forty years of age, and quite accustomed to sleeping in these tight quarters on hard ground.  

He slid feet first into place in the bag and tent, expertly arranging his long legs and oversized shoulders so that his feet almost touched the end of the tent. His sleeping bag stretched tight across his shoulders to nearly touch the tent on each side.  Ready for sleep, he reached up with one arm and pulled the zipper closed to keep out the mosquitoes.   

He knew from experience, if he could keep still enough while he slept, maintaining the gap between his sleeping bag and the tent, on all sides, then any moisture from dew or rain in the night would not wick through the fabric and into his sleeping bag. He also knew from experience, as he closed his eyes, that much like his chances of finding bigfoot, there was almost no hope of his staying away from the sides of the tent all night. He mostly hoped for dry weather.

Many years ago, when he had purchased this camping equipment, this proximity to the tent walls was not as much of an issue. Although still considered slim by most standards, he had filled out considerably with age; now weighing a solid two hundred and thirty pounds.

Next morning, realizing as soon as he had opened his eyes that he must have overslept, a fact made apparent by the tent being fully lit by the morning sun shining against the fabric, he yawned, rubbed his eyes and checked his watch.

He was sweating. It was the bright sunshine heating the stagnant air in the tent that had eventually awakened him. Still drowsy, and a bit clammy, he stretched, and freed his torso from the sleeping bag. With a quick pull of the zipper, that familiar noise announcing its release, he flipped the tent flap open. He rolled to his stomach and started to crawl, army style, out of his cozy quarters, at the same time still blinking the sleep from his eyes. 

Getting to his knees, the first motion in the process of standing up, he froze. He blinked again. His heart jumped. His eyes widened. Standing on the far side of the small clearing, just in the shade of a large evergreen, was a large creature. It stood completely motionless, its long fur blowing in the wind. The pine boughs in the background, with their long green needles, were swept back and forth by that same wind, in the same rhythm, as the creature’s fur.

It was Bigfoot. 

Joe remained frozen, unmoving, still on his knees, half way out of the tent, his neck craned up uncomfortably flexing to keep his eyes directed at the unbelievable sight before him. His feet remained tangled in his sleeping bag inside the tent. He dared not move. He dared not spook the creature. His mind was swimming with excitement, and his heart was speeding up to match. 

His first thought, even in his excitement, was of his camera. All of his years of searching, spotting so many animals and sights when he least expected to see them, had trained him to be always camera ready. Murphy’s law, when applied to photography, states that when you don’t have your camera you will come across the photo opportunity of a lifetime. In his early years he had missed so many wonderful chances, and cussed himself so often after the fact, that he had since vowed to carry the camera always. Before him now was, indeed, the shot of his lifetime. So where was his camera? Was it in the tent or was it still in his backpack?

He did a quick mental review of the previous evening, and immediately discovered, to his dismay, that he wasn’t sure where he had left his camera. Mister methodical could not remember definitively. He worried that he had left the camera in his backpack. The backpack, per his usual routine, was suspended from a rope in a nearby tree, to keep the food out of reach of any foraging bear. But … maybe … hopefully, yes, he thought, maybe he had laid the camera in the tent next to his boots, which was his routine. Please let it be there. Now was no time for him to have been lax in his methods! Getting the backpack down from the tree and getting the camera out, without scaring the creature away, certainly was not an option.

Slowly, ever so slowly, with no other choice, Joe turned his eyes away from the creature to look back past his right shoulder into the tent to see if the camera was there. First, he moved his eyes only. Not good enough, he could not rotate his eyes far enough to see without moving his head. He would have to risk some larger movement. Ever so slowly he turned his head just slightly, hoping it was not a noticeable motion, rotating until the tent flap was visible to him. He could see one boot, and the laces of the other boot. No camera. He didn’t dare to move his arm, to feel around on the floor of the tent among his belongings for the Nikon. What to do? No camera. It was probably in the pack. Now what??

In despair, he returned his attention to the creature, feeling just sick that he would not be able to get a picture. He would have to rely on memory. He would have to rely on mentally giving it a close study.

It was gone.  Nowhere in sight.  Nothing!

Still without moving anything but his eyes and head, he searched the area. Carefully at first, then more frantically with each passing second, he scanned the surroundings. Where was the creature? Where did it go? Disregarding now the need to remain quiet or still he twisted quickly to look to his right, then to his left. He turned and searched behind the tent. 

Nothing…. nothing….nothing! 

What did he just see and where did it go? Joe had not heard a sound. How could it disappear so fast? It was just right there! 

He sat down at the opening of his tent. His heart still racing. Find your camera! He scolded himself. Just in case he comes back. Geez what an idiot!  After all of these years. Despondent thoughts bounced around in his head. 

He found the camera tucked behind one of his boots against the wall of the tent. Near where he had placed it the night before. Now he recalled how he had taken it from around his neck, when he had sat down to remove his boots, and placed it in its usual spot. He must have rolled and slid it over in the night. It was the binoculars that he had stuck back into the backpack. He remembered now. He had switched the binoculars with the camera. He seldom carried both around his neck. Together they were too cumbersome. He slipped the camera strap over his head and scrambled out of the tent. The Nikon bounced against his chest as he turned to survey his surroundings.

He lifted the camera, popped off the lens cap, turning it on, he gave it a moment to focus and, in an act of frustration, he snapped a picture of where the Bigfoot had been standing. Then he panned the area looking through the telescoping lens, searching in detail the surrounding forest. He replaced the lens cap and laid the camera back down against his chest. “Which way did you go big fella?” he whispered. “Which way did you go?”

Feeling a building sense of urgency, he set out to follow the creature while it may still be in the area. Every second delay meant the creature might be farther away. He hurried off to the edge of the clearing, but there he was forced to pause, befuddled. He had no clue which way to go. He was momentarily paralyzed by the fear of choosing wrong. This was too important to be guessing. There had to be a logical way to improve his chances, a way to add method to his next move.

He tried to recall more details, but there were precious few. He had seen a large furry creature, covered with camel colored hair. It was broad, but not round. Yes, tall and sculptured, not round like a bear. Tall like a statue of a very large human covered with fur, standing erect, broader at the shoulders than at the waist, but still thick at the waist. A huge solid creature. 

Its face?  What could he remember about its face?  Not a lot. He recalled the face being maybe more human than animal. The face seemed more like the face of a heavily bearded man than that of an ape. But, still it had hair everywhere. He did not remember any bare skin, just locally shorter finer hair or fur in some areas around the creature’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Did the creature have a mouth? Yes, he kind of remembered seeing a mouth. It wasn’t open. It was just there, he thought.

That’s not much detail, he supposed. He chastised himself for having spent the entire time thinking about finding the camera instead of concentrating on the spectacle before him, memorizing more particulars. He did recall some specifics, maybe more than he deserved, considering such a short viewing time. A picture would have been better. He forgave himself. Trying to find the camera had definitely been the right move at the time. In hindsight though, he couldn’t help feel regret.

He walked slowly over to the huge red pine, the backdrop to where the creature had been, still feeling the anxiety of the need to quickly follow. This desperate feeling conflicted mightily with not knowing which direction to rush off to in pursuit. He needed just the slightest clue to set him on the right trail. Again, he checked his surroundings as he walked, in the slim chance that the creature had returned or was anywhere still in sight. He was careful not to tread too close to where he estimated the creature had been standing, not wanting to disturb any possible signs. 

Roots and rock were all he found. Where the creature had stood the ground happened to consist of a huge submerged granite layer covered with a shallow dusting of powdery moss and pine needles, with a few widespread tree roots branching across its hard surface. The roots were thick, with soft bark, which would certainly be marked had they been tread upon by such a large creature. Joe examined the area for any obvious recent disturbance. There was nothing. The pine needles and moss appeared undisturbed. The stone beneath them was so hard that an elephant would not have left a mark. Joe bent closer and tried to discern any markings that might have been a footprint. Nothing!  Maybe this wasn’t where the creature had stood? He went back and squatted in front of the tent opening to reset his perspective.

He expanded his search to the edges of the stony ground, thinking that the creature must have tread across softer turf to get where he had been. More importantly he must have left tracks when exiting that area. There must be tracks. Hell, that’s what Bigfoot was most famous for, wasn’t it? leaving big footprints. He combed the area for evidence of broken twigs, scraped dirt or bark, maybe hair? He found nothing. He wished mightily that he had at least kept his eyes on the creature long enough to know which direction it had gone so that he could focus his search along that route.

He donned his backpack and camera and set off, longing for another glimpse of the creature, determined to act now even if it was in the wrong direction. Time was working against him. He hoped to find evidence, some proof that he was not imagining things.

Still not knowing in which direction to start his search, Joe calmed himself and decided instead to carefully circle the campsite, gradually increasing his radius, methodically searching until he cut across a clue that would lead him in the right direction. It was a painfully slow approach he knew, but he could think of no other logical option. He took a deep breath and started this task.

His eyes focused intently on the ground before him, on his mission, as he worked his way around the bordering woods. Every minute or so he would break from this and peer about, in hopes of another sighting. His mind would flip-flop between flashbacks to the sighting of the creature, kicking himself for not being camera ready, and trying to figure out if there was a better approach to the situation than the one that he had just chosen. Then he would return to his plan. He always stuck with his plan. Joe Danno was far from impulsive. He was and always had been structured.

As he slowly circled the campsite he skipped the areas of dense underbrush, assuming that the creature would do the same. His many years of outdoor experience had taught him that, like water, large forest animals, unless startled and forced to do otherwise, would take the path of least resistance. There was a heavily traveled deer trail not far from his camp. Unlike the rest of the surrounding forest floor, which was covered with pine needles and dried half-rotted leaves, the deer path was worn down to bare packed dirt. The occasional freshly scuffed cleft hoof mark showed that some deer had passed through recently, more recently than the last rain. Joe examined the dirt of the trail wondering what kind of mark the creature might have made if it had gone down this trail. He pressed hard with the sole of his hiking boot into that dirt. It barely left an impression. It was hard packed earth. If Bigfoot did come this way the trail may not reveal any evidence. He thought about exploring further up the trail to see if there were any softer soil along its way that might hold a foot print. No, he disciplined himself as usual, stick to the plan. Circle until you find a sure sign. You can always come back here and follow this trail.

With the meticulous care of an archeologist, he circled and combed the area surrounding his camp. Ducking through the buckthorn, fighting the prickly ash in some of the thicker zones where no easy route was available, then enjoying the sparse undergrowth and wonderful scent as he passed beneath a stand of mature cedars and an even larger cluster of white pines. Three more times he crossed that same deer trail as his radius of investigation expanded. Each time he held the same internal debate before passing on the urge to follow that trail.

Eventually his hopes began to fade along with his focus on the details. His mind wandered further as his eyes and body continued to rummage through the woods. He was slowly giving in to the realization that he had chosen wrong. His plan wasn’t working. He should have guessed a direction and tried to follow in hopes of catching sight of the creature again.  

  His mind drifted as he circled and searched, working his pattern through the woods, and his hope for another sighting waned. He contemplated the exhilaration of that moment that was the start to his day. Bigfoot had looked exactly like he had always dreamed a bigfoot would look. Much taller and thicker than a human, large head, albeit missing the exaggerated elongated forehead commonly depicted in sketches, long straight tan fur, body, though thick, more human in shape than the great apes; just like Bigfoot was supposed to look; straight out of his dreams. Why was that slightly bothersome?

He had to admit to himself that he hadn’t been fully awake. He had overslept and was groggy from the heat. Could he have imagined the whole thing? Could it have been a dream? Nonsense. He shook his head as if that would help dissuade such thoughts. He saw what he saw. He picked his way through a small stand of birch trees. No, he told himself, he had not imagined it. He saw what he saw. But, how was it possible for a creature that size to appear out of nowhere, so quietly, and vanish again, so suddenly without a sound. Was it a hallucination?

No. He told himself. He saw what he saw.