Hunting Bigfoot Update: My First Contact

Before I get anyone's hopes up, I don't mean my first contact with the mythical beast known as bigfoot. If that did happen, the first place I turn to would most likely not be my blog but rather my apartment for a change of pants.

Today I got an e-mail from a woman calling herself Vilnoori (she asked her real identity be hidden). She seems to be a regular participant on the Bigfoot Forums. She found my work e-mail address on a post I had made there asking for people in the Mt. Baker to talk to about bigfoot. Her e-mail to me concisely and clearly explained an alleged bigfoot experience she had had in a wooded area near Sumas, Washington, which is about half an hour east of Blaine. She even included photos.

She told me that a few years ago on a walk in the woods near Sumas, she came across some (to her eyes, at least) larger-than-human footprints in the mud and a few large broken branches. She said the larger of the two footprints was 17 inches long and the smaller was about 10 inches. While in this area, she also heard a strange humming sound she described as like that "...made by a large child inside a hollow culvert." She also found a tree that had been pushed over and a collection of small pebbles piled up in a nearby creek.

While she admitted she was on the fence about the existence of bigfoot, she did offer a possible explanation for the scene she came across. She suspected it might have been a play area of sorts for a young bigfoot accompanied by its mother, thus explaining the varying sizes of footprint and the broken branches.

The photos she included in the e-mail, while appreciated, didn't really show much of anything. The size of the human-like footprints was unclear, and the pile of pebbles in the stream was out of focus. I sent her an e-mail asking some questions about the circumstances of her discovery. I eagerly await her reply.

To sum up, Vilnoori seems to have seen something she did not immediately understand and has done her best to explain it given the available information. That's really all anyone can ask of someone who has experienced something unusual. Her story is not proof of bigfoot living in the area by any means, but I appreciate that she made the effort to come to me and say: I don't know what this, here's what I think, and here are some pictures. I hope everyone I meet while researching this story is as helpful and reasonable as she has been.

Hunting Bigfoot: The Journey Begins

Before I begin discussing the search for an allegedly extant bipedal primate in the forests of my adoptive home of Washington, I want to make one thing clear: I am a skeptic when it comes to bigfoot. Hell, I'm a skeptic when it comes to anything for which their is scant or no evidence. The existence of the "paranormal" would indeed be interesting, but I, like many others, need some hard evidence to back up the host of paranormal claims out there.

With that said, I have had an interest in the cultural phenomenon known as bigfoot since I was child. It's that interest and a recent assignment at work that have lead me to write this post.

Point Roberts Press, the publishers of The Northern Light, also puts out a quarterly publication called Mount Baker Experience, which covers outdoor-type activities in the Mt. Baker foothills area. Our Winter 2011 issue is coming up, and I pitched the loosely formed idea of writing an article about bigfoot hunting in the foothills area.

The point of this post and subsequent ones is to keep the audience of this blog, if there is one, updated on the status of this particular story.  I am doing this for the bigfoot article because the topic and those intent on finding the creature are of particular interest to me. So, without further ado, here's what I've done so far.

My search first brought me to BigfootForums.com, an online forum where all manner of bigfoot-interested folk can come and discuss sightings of the creature all across the U.S. and dish on investigative techniques and equipment. My first cursory perusing of this site turned up pretty much what I expected: people who genuinely believe something is out there and have devoted varying sections of there lives to finding out what it is.

From this site I became aware of a book published in 1995 called "Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the dark Divide," which is about a rather well-known encounter with a group of alleged bigfoots (bigfeet?) near Mt. St. Helens in the early 1900s. At least it seems to be, I have yet to read it. The author, Robert Michael Pyle, still lives in Washington and runs The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. I sent an e-mail to the group's e-mail address asking for contacts for any bigfoot "investigators" in the Mt. Baker area. I have yet to see a reply.

Further investigation of the Bigfoot Forums lead me to the Washington Sasquatch Research Team based in the Mt. Rainier area. I e-mailed Steve Schauer, one of the founding Steves of the WSRT, about research and sightings in the Mt. Baker area. He said he did not know of any groups poking around on Mt. Baker and that his group sticks to Mt. Rainier.

Long story short, I have not made much headway for this story. Hopefully the weeks to come will provide me with some usable leads.

My Memory is A Little Foggy

I hope the paucity of posts this past week can be forgiven. These past few days have been especially busy at work and I have been feeling a bit under the weather.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, maybe Wednesday, also, I can't exactly remember, I had the eerie pleasure of driving through a bit of fog on my way to work. Fog also greeted me as I arrived and hung around for some time on those days. The view from The Northern Light's second-story office usually gives a pretty good view of Canada just across the water. On the foggy days, however, visibility stopped just beyond the road that runs parallel to the water line.

With these instances included, I only have to use both my hands to count the number of times I've been in fog. Understandably, this came as a surprise to all my co-workers. Most of them were even more surprised to learn that the very first time I had ever been in fog was four years ago at the beginning of my freshman year at Western.

You see, fog does not happen much, at all really, in my hometown. I vividly remember how surreal it was to walk through it that night I experienced it for the first time. I also remember being a little angry, seeing as how that particular instance of fog delayed me from flying home for a few days.

Experiencing it again this week made me think back on my first weeks at Western,which were also my first weeks in the Pacific Northwest, and all the drastically different weather conditions it had to offer. With my adult life in this part of the country just barely beginning, I can't help but think what other unique aspects of this place will send memories of my earliest days here rushing back.

I guess only time will tell.