I was seventeen years old in nineteen sixty nine when my brother asked me if
I'd like to join him on a three day hike up in the back country
of Yosemite National Park. He had just come home from Vietnam. Even though
I had camped out many times with my family, I had never been on
a hike for that long before, so I said yes. The first day,
we followed a steep path that dropped a thousand feet to the river.
It was about the end of April, which is early spring in the high
country, and Yosemite is a big place. We didn't see anyone else throughout
the entire trip as we traveled over hill and dale in the beautiful Sierra Nevada
Mountains. The first night, we camped near a babbling stream. After lunch
the next day, we walked through a sunny alpine meadow covered in light green,
knee high spring grasses and flowers. The meadow was situated in a valley
surrounded by tall wooded hills, and it was a spectacular sight. And then
we entered an aspen forest dappled with sunlight. There we noticed the faint smell
of a skump. It was weak enough that We figured the skump must have
left some time ago, so we kept on walking further into the grove,
we came across a newly built windowless ranger shed constructed of thick corrugated steel.
All the necessary tools and equipment to repair trails in the back country were kept
there so the forest strangers wouldn't have to haul them back and forth. We
knew this because the front and one side were torn off, with the heavy
metal corrugated panels scattered all over the nearby woods. We stood there gawking at
it for several minutes, trying to figure out how this could have happened.
My brother said it must have been a big bear, freshly awake from its
winter hibernation that did it. But on closer inspection, there were neither claw
marks nor teeth marks on any of the eight foot long panels. Some of
them were curled into themselves like a sea, and others were thrown up to
thirty feet away. It was as if someone tall had peeled the sheets off
like peeling a banana and tossed them aside. Nothing inside the shed was disturbed.
Whatever peeled away the panels had no interest in the contents The bears in
California are mostly small brown bears like on our state flag. A doubt a
bear like that could have reached high enough on the shed to grab the top
of a panel and rip it away. It was unnerving to consider what might
have been able to do that kind of damage. Let's get out of here
and put a few miles between us and this place before we stopped for the
night. My brother said, I was more than happy to comply. Neither
of us had ever heard the word sasquatch or bigfoot at the time. My
brother was carrying a small hunting knife, but that was it. We had
no guns and no bear spray. A small, steady breeze kicked up in
the late afternoon that stayed with us all night. When we got there,
we were too tired from our long hike to build a fire, so we
had supper of salami and cheese on bread with a sigh of fruit, and
then we hung our food pack up in the tree and went to bed,
and the wind gently swayed our tent for the whole night. The sun had
not quite set behind the tall trees when we fell asleep. Some time later,
something woke me up. I had been dreaming that I was having a
conversation with someone who reminded me of Little Abner. I know I'm dating myself
now, so I should explain that Little Abner was a comic strip character in
the Sun Comics when I was growing up. He was a big, dark
haired man with muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm not entirely sure the person in
my dream was human, or that it was even a dream. In any
case, we talked for a short time, and then something completely woke me
up. Instantly, I realized something heavy just outside the tent was hitting the
ground next to my head, and I could feel the vibration of the impacts.
I laid there, frozen in fear as it, whatever it was,
took a long inhaling sniff only twelve inches from my head. There was no
doubt that it had taken in my scent right through the thin material of our
pup tent. Too afraid to move, I listened intently to see if it
would move to my brother's side of the tent and sniff there. Instead,
it grabbed the tent pole by our heads and started shaking violently. Wake up,
Wake up, I screamed, and as soon as I began to speak.
The shaking stop so my brother didn't see it. He accused me of
having a nightmare induced by the sight of that shit, and told me to
go back to sleep, and then he rolled over with his back to both
me and the tent pole. Again, something grabbed the pole and shook it
violently for three seconds. There's something outside shaking the tent, I said,
It's just the wind, he answered angrily, Please go back to sleep.
My brother is more than just a brother. He and I are great friends.
Never before nor since had he ever spoken so gruffly to me. That
was as much a shock as the tent shaking. I was between a rock
and a hard place, and I was sweating bullets from the fear of what
was outside, and thoroughly crushed by my brother's reaction. Well, I laid
there and fought back the panic and frustration, and listened for anything that might
be moving around outside the tent. The gentle breeze covered all the subtle noises,
and finally, either from shock or exhaustion, I fell asleep. At
daybreak. We got up. There were no signs of anything having been around
the tent, so we took down the pack and had some water. We
decided we walk a couple of miles of then stop and eat breakfast. My
brother was like a mountain goat, and I had twisted my ankle on the
first day, so I was constantly lagging seventy five feet behind him. But
as we walked along, I began to have a dialogue in my head,
as if someone were interviewing me in a sort of a get acquainted, friendly
talking manner. It was as if someone else was asking the questions and I
was answering them. We were still in that high valley, so there were
no trees on either side of our trail. Clearly there was no one around
me, but the conversation continued in my head for a mile or so.
I felt a presence, so I kept glancing around to see if anyone was
there, But no one was there, and still the questions kept popping into
my head and I kept answering them, and then suddenly it stopped. It
was as if the interview was over. And when it was over, I
felt a little silly for having thought about myself and my life as if someone
were there listening to me. It was a bright, sunlit day, but
I was alone. Why would I go on and on about my life and
my family like that. I've only recently learned about mine to speak, and
knew nothing of it at the time, and it was a very strange feeling.
Well, at that point I decided to enjoy the walk, and eventually
we were back at the Big Trees again. There we came across a log
jammer around a deep pool blocking our way. The trees were about three feet
in diameter. My brother went around to the riot, where it was real
swampy, and I chose to go to the left and jump from log to
log while keeping my feet as dry as possible. Well, one log turned
out to be a bad choice. The far end was anchored on the bank,
but the end closest to me was under the log that I had been
standing on, and I soon learned it was just floating in the water,
and as soon as I jumped down on it, it began to sink.
The crystal clear pool was about eight to ten feet deep, and as I
jumped, I heard run in my mind. With a burst of speed,
I made it to the other end of the twenty five foot log before it
sank too deep and dumped me in the icy snow. Melt. It was
the easiest run I had ever experienced. It felt like I was feather light,
even with a pack. It was almost like someone was pushing me while
lifting up the pack to take the weight off me. The log was sinking
fast, but I seemed to be flying over it. I managed to get
across with only one wet foot. Even as I was running, though,
I couldn't help but think, what is happening to me? At the other
end, my brother was blanched white as he fumbled to get his pack off.
He thought he was going to have to dive in and help me out.
At seventeen, it hadn't occurred to me just how dangerous the route I
had taken was, and that maneuver in particular was very dangerous. If I
had fallen in with the backpack, the water absorbed by the sleeping bag alone
could have been enough to drag me under. This probably all sounds ridiculous to
anyone listening, but it is how I remember it. Something weird happened on
that log. There's no way anyone could have been behind me. No one
was there but my brother, and he was in front of me. Even
if someone had been there, their weight would have caused the log to sink
even more. The explanation I have come up with is absurd, to say
the least. Many thoughts have run through my mind. Was an invisible,
hovering sisquatch pushing me along and holding up my backpack? Or was something helping
a human to save a life. It's definitely one for the book of the
Weird. Now I know I'm probably making a mountain out of a mole hill.
I wouldn't blame you if you laughed at my story. I'm laughing right
along with you. The only reason I think sisquatch is because of the destroyed
ranger shed and the smell of the skunk just before we found it. And
I suppose it could have been any benevolent spirit who saved me, but something
did. As unbelievable as it sounds, it is exactly what happened. Nothing
else of any significance happened on that trip. We never spoke of it again,
and I forgot all about it. In recent years, I've listened to
a lot of bigfoot stories on YouTube. It wasn't until recently, though,
when another person mentioned being sniffed through their tent, that all that came back
to me having something large sniff you through a tent is incredibly unsettling. Perhaps
that's what caused me to repress the memory until now. I never saw a
side squatch, nor do I know what the interviewing thing was. I'm just
glad that whatever or whoever it was was there to save my life when I
needed it on that law and God bless them for that