Did I ever tell you about the time...

Painting by Sali Sheppard-Wolfard

...I saw Bigfoot?

When you're three, seeing Bigfoot really isn't a very big deal. Three-year olds don't have much concept of what's real and what's fantasy… seeing a bigfoot in the woods isn't any different than seeing a gorilla in a cage - which, consequently, I saw when I was four, at the B&I department store in Tacoma. At any rate, kids don't experience incredulity. Maybe that's why I forgot. I mean, sure, it was neat, but so was seeing the gorilla in the cage and I didn't remember that either until Mom reminded me of it.

When I was three, we lived in Washington State, in the foothills of Mt. Rainier. We had just moved out into the boonies from Tacoma. On a misty morning, Mom and I took a walk down the path behind our house that led to the river. "We were picking up sticks," Mom said. "When we moved out there, we didn't have any other source of heat - just a wood cook stove. We couldn't afford cordwood so after I got Hal off to work and the other kids off to school, you and I would go out and pick up sticks in the woods for fuel." We rounded a curve in the path and there they were. One was huge and dark, the other smaller and fawn-colored. I guess we stood there for a minute, looking at them looking at us. Then Mom told me, quietly and urgently, to turn around and "walk, don't run". I did just that, with Mom behind me. She took my hand and walked me faster and my little legs could hardly keep up. She didn't stop when we got to the yard, but ushered me into the house and closed the door. We had dropped our sticks along the way.

When Hal (my father) came home, he wanted to know why there was no fuel for the fire. Mom told him some story about feeling sick and took his grumbling in stride. When he went out to get the wood I'll bet she wished they'd carry him off. No wonder she never told him.

I don't remember much else, except his eyes. Not the little one's… the big one's. His eyes were just like a human's - only enormous, and slightly convex, rounded like a cat's. It gave them a surreal quality, like a myopic person's eyes behind thick glasses looking bigger than they should. But it was what was in his eyes… the expression. There was a Knowing there, and something else… something eerily powerful.

Native Americans believe the Sasquatch has acquired the talent of hypnotizing its subject with its eyes. Tribal legends tell of Sasquatch creatures appearing to shape-shift, or even disappear from view, but often they credit this not as a physical ability but an illusory one. Eyewitness accounts of creatures disappearing support these claims; the creatures appear to be able to 'hide in plain sight'. Similar accounts include witnesses hearing footsteps, but seeing nothing in the direction of the sound despite a clear view. Also, witnesses complain of feelings of invasion, 'as if something is trying to get inside my head'. Not everyone believes in Bigfoot. Of those who do, still fewer believe that it is anything more than a North American ape, or a throwback to Gigantopithecus Blacki. But our beliefs change as our experience changes, and the truth will wait for us to catch up.