WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.879 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.320 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.719 --> 00:01:05.000 I've spent a long time around men who saw something 14 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:07.840 they couldn't name and went back to work the next morning. 15 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:11.200 There was nothing else to do. All three of these 16 00:01:11.239 --> 00:01:14.239 men cut timber for a living. The country they worked 17 00:01:14.239 --> 00:01:17.239 has mostly been logged over twice since they walked away 18 00:01:17.239 --> 00:01:20.640 from it. Two of them are gone now. One still 19 00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:23.760 answers his phone. It takes him four or five rings, 20 00:01:23.959 --> 00:01:25.599 like he has to cross a big room to get 21 00:01:25.599 --> 00:01:28.200 to it. They gave me these accounts over the better 22 00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:32.079 part of two years, kitchens porches, once the cab of 23 00:01:32.079 --> 00:01:35.400 a pickup that smelled like bar oil and old coffee. 24 00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:37.560 I'm not going to tell you exactly how i came 25 00:01:37.599 --> 00:01:40.120 to be sitting across from each of them. It doesn't 26 00:01:40.159 --> 00:01:42.879 matter to the stories. What matters is that they weren't 27 00:01:42.879 --> 00:01:45.680 selling anything. None of them had a book, None of 28 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:47.680 them wanted their last names on a word of it. 29 00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:51.959 I've honored that you'll meet them as Earl, Roy and Hollis. 30 00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:55.040 The men who worked beside them get first names too. 31 00:01:55.760 --> 00:01:57.959 If you've listened to me for any length of time, 32 00:01:58.319 --> 00:02:02.400 you know I was born a skeptic. I'll probably die one. 33 00:02:02.439 --> 00:02:05.200 For four decades, I've tried to separate whatever is really 34 00:02:05.239 --> 00:02:08.199 out there from the noise, and I've lost my patience 35 00:02:08.199 --> 00:02:10.680 more than once with the crowd that wants every snap 36 00:02:10.759 --> 00:02:14.800 twig to be a message from another dimension. So understand this. 37 00:02:15.439 --> 00:02:17.639 When I sit with a man like Earl, I'm not 38 00:02:17.680 --> 00:02:20.319 looking to believe him. I'm looking for the place where 39 00:02:20.319 --> 00:02:24.360 the story breaks. Most stories break. These three didn't it, 40 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:27.360 Or they didn't break the way a made up story breaks, 41 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:30.159 which is a different thing. And harder to put into words. 42 00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:34.680 Five accounts from three men. One gave me a single story, 43 00:02:35.240 --> 00:02:38.280 two gave me more. I've kept their words close to 44 00:02:38.319 --> 00:02:41.400 how they said them. I smoothed the line here and there, 45 00:02:41.879 --> 00:02:45.159 but the places are real, the years are as close 46 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:49.879 as memory allows. I'll leave the conclusions to you. Earl 47 00:02:49.919 --> 00:02:52.120 set chokers on a high led show in the Oregon 48 00:02:52.159 --> 00:02:55.520 Coast range the summer he turned twenty two. He wanted 49 00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:58.560 one thing clear before he started. He hadn't been scared 50 00:02:58.599 --> 00:03:00.879 of anything that summer until the thing by the creek. 51 00:03:01.639 --> 00:03:04.520 The order of those two facts was the whole point. 52 00:03:04.759 --> 00:03:06.520 You got to know what a young man is like, 53 00:03:06.599 --> 00:03:09.800 he said. I waged about a buck seventy. I thought 54 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:12.080 a falling tree was something that happened to other men. 55 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:14.840 I'd already been on a crew where a fellow got 56 00:03:14.840 --> 00:03:17.479 cut near in half by a butt rigging that snapped loose. 57 00:03:18.199 --> 00:03:20.960 Seen it, helped pick up after it, and I went 58 00:03:21.039 --> 00:03:23.800 back the next morning and ate my eggs. So weigh 59 00:03:23.840 --> 00:03:26.280 the creek thing against that. I wasn't a boy that 60 00:03:26.400 --> 00:03:30.520 scared easy. It was a small outfit, a gipo show, 61 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:33.599 he called it. That meant an independent contractor cutting on 62 00:03:33.599 --> 00:03:36.680 a handshake and a thin margin working ground. The big 63 00:03:36.719 --> 00:03:38.960 companies had passed over because it was too broken to 64 00:03:38.960 --> 00:03:42.719 be worth their machinery. Nine of them. A bull of 65 00:03:42.719 --> 00:03:46.360 the woods named Dell ran the side, two fowlers, a 66 00:03:46.400 --> 00:03:50.360 couple of buckers, the whistle punk, the yarder, engineer, a 67 00:03:50.479 --> 00:03:53.319 chaser at the landing, and earl on the rigging crew. 68 00:03:54.039 --> 00:03:57.199 The whistle punk was a kid of about sixteen named Arnie. 69 00:03:57.319 --> 00:04:00.240 I asked Earl to walk me through the work. Leave 70 00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:02.800 the workout, and the work is where the story lives. 71 00:04:03.360 --> 00:04:05.240 He laid it out the way an old hand does, 72 00:04:05.560 --> 00:04:09.319 slow and in order. A tall spar tree stood rigged 73 00:04:09.360 --> 00:04:11.479 with a main line and a haulback running off a 74 00:04:11.520 --> 00:04:15.080 steam donkey. A tree came down and got bucked into logs. 75 00:04:15.759 --> 00:04:18.480 Then it was Earle's job to climb into the slash, 76 00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:22.279 wrap a steel choker cable around a log and signal Arnie. 77 00:04:22.959 --> 00:04:25.959 Arnie blew a pattern of whistles. The pattern told the 78 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:29.000 engineer to take up the slack. The log jumped and 79 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:31.959 started its drag uphill, and Earle had to be clear 80 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:35.279 of it before it moved. A log under tension does 81 00:04:35.319 --> 00:04:38.279 what it pleases, he said. The rigging crew dies more 82 00:04:38.279 --> 00:04:40.920 than anybody. You learn to read a log like you 83 00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:43.920 read weather. You keep your feet under you and your 84 00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:46.959 eye on the line, not on anything else. So when 85 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:48.759 I tell you I was looking off into the brush 86 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:51.959 instead of at my work, understand that was already wrong. 87 00:04:52.519 --> 00:04:55.920 That already shouldn't have happened. The first sign that summer 88 00:04:56.000 --> 00:05:01.639 was lunches. Everybody loses a lunch, earl said Ravens Camp robbers, 89 00:05:01.879 --> 00:05:04.839 those gray jay's. You leave a sandwich on a stump 90 00:05:04.879 --> 00:05:08.879 and turn your back, it's gone. That's nothing. What started 91 00:05:08.920 --> 00:05:12.639 happening was the buckets. The men kept their food in 92 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:15.199 metal pails. They set them in the shade of one 93 00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:18.360 particular hemlock down by the creek, where it stayed cool 94 00:05:18.399 --> 00:05:22.399 through the morning. Something started getting into them, not the 95 00:05:22.439 --> 00:05:25.439 way an animal does it. An animal tears and bolts 96 00:05:25.439 --> 00:05:28.360 and leaves a mess. This took the lids off clean 97 00:05:28.439 --> 00:05:31.920 and set them down beside the pails upright the way 98 00:05:31.959 --> 00:05:35.639 a man would. The food went whole. One bucket would 99 00:05:35.639 --> 00:05:39.319 have a thermist standing inside it and everything else gone. 100 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:42.319 That was the part that got to Dell. A bear 101 00:05:42.360 --> 00:05:45.079 doesn't stand a thermis back up after it eats your sandwich. 102 00:05:45.519 --> 00:05:48.519 They blamed a man. There's always a man to blame. 103 00:05:49.319 --> 00:05:51.839 They settled on a quiet bucker named Cliff, who ate 104 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:54.720 enormous amounts and never seemed to have his own food along. 105 00:05:55.600 --> 00:05:58.639 Dell braced him about it. Cliff got hot. There was 106 00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:01.240 nearly a fight over by the lane, two men with 107 00:06:01.279 --> 00:06:03.439 their shirts off in the dirt before the chaser got 108 00:06:03.439 --> 00:06:05.720 between them. So two of the crew hit up the 109 00:06:05.720 --> 00:06:08.199 slope one noon to watch the buckets and settle it. 110 00:06:08.759 --> 00:06:11.879 They didn't see Cliff, Earl said, they didn't see anything. 111 00:06:12.519 --> 00:06:15.560 But while they're up there watching every man's bucket got 112 00:06:15.560 --> 00:06:18.600 cleaned out. They were looking right down at that hemlock 113 00:06:18.680 --> 00:06:22.040 the whole time and couldn't tell you how. One of them, 114 00:06:22.240 --> 00:06:25.160 fellow named Lewis, said it was like the food just left. 115 00:06:25.959 --> 00:06:28.959 That's when it stopped being a joke. Lewis quit at 116 00:06:28.959 --> 00:06:30.959 the end of that week. He gave a reason that 117 00:06:30.959 --> 00:06:33.199 didn't sound like a lie. And I'd heard a lot 118 00:06:33.199 --> 00:06:35.439 of men lie about why they were quitting a hard show. 119 00:06:36.120 --> 00:06:39.480 His was different. After that, the crew kept their food 120 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:43.360 up at the landing. The bucket business stopped cold. Earle 121 00:06:43.399 --> 00:06:46.560 thought that meant something by itself. It wasn't a bear 122 00:06:46.680 --> 00:06:49.759 or a coon. He said, it moved its operation when 123 00:06:49.759 --> 00:06:53.279 we moved ours. It watched what we did and changed 124 00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:56.079 what it did. Try and tell me a bear does that. 125 00:06:57.480 --> 00:07:00.319 He'd started noticing other things by then, and a man 126 00:07:00.319 --> 00:07:04.279 who starts noticing can't stop. Some mornings, the dogs wouldn't 127 00:07:04.279 --> 00:07:07.639 go down to the bottom. The outfit kept too, a 128 00:07:07.680 --> 00:07:10.959 black mongrel named Tar that belonged to nobody in particular, 129 00:07:11.240 --> 00:07:14.959 and an old blue heeler the chaser owned. Those dogs 130 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:17.759 ran the woods all day. They slept under the idling 131 00:07:17.839 --> 00:07:20.519 yard or with the whole rig shaking over them. But 132 00:07:20.639 --> 00:07:23.160 some mornings they'd get to one spot on the skid road, 133 00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:26.600 right where the ground tip down toward the creek, and stop. 134 00:07:27.439 --> 00:07:30.480 You couldn't make them go further. Tar would stand with 135 00:07:30.600 --> 00:07:33.680 his hackles up, his weight back on his haunches, and 136 00:07:33.759 --> 00:07:38.000 make a low sound, almost a moan. Earl hadn't heard 137 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.800 a dog make it before. The heeler would slink back 138 00:07:40.879 --> 00:07:42.560 up the road and have to ride in the truck 139 00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:44.920 the rest of the day, or it'd just go home. 140 00:07:45.839 --> 00:07:48.120 You could whip Tar and he wouldn't go, Earle said. 141 00:07:48.720 --> 00:07:51.079 And Tar was a dog that'd take a whipping and 142 00:07:51.160 --> 00:07:54.279 forgive you and follow you anyway, but not down there, 143 00:07:54.680 --> 00:07:58.279 not those mornings. And here's the thing. The mornings the 144 00:07:58.319 --> 00:08:01.879 dogs balked were the mornings there was sign. The sign 145 00:08:02.040 --> 00:08:05.160 was tracks. They showed up in the soft ground by 146 00:08:05.199 --> 00:08:07.759 the creek where the men crossed on a downed log. 147 00:08:08.600 --> 00:08:12.199 Earl got careful here. He knew what I'd ask. I'm 148 00:08:12.199 --> 00:08:13.879 not going to hand you a measurement I made up 149 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:17.480 forty years after he said, I didn't measure. I was 150 00:08:17.519 --> 00:08:19.759 a kid with work to do, and Dale didn't want 151 00:08:19.759 --> 00:08:22.920 to standing around looking at mud, said it slowed the show. 152 00:08:23.399 --> 00:08:25.639 But I put my own boot down inside one once 153 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:28.480 stood my foot in the heel of it. I wore 154 00:08:28.519 --> 00:08:31.360 a size eleven. My whole boot sat in the heel 155 00:08:31.399 --> 00:08:33.360 of that track, with room left at the front for 156 00:08:33.399 --> 00:08:36.600 another half a foot of foot. That's not off a ruler. 157 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:39.519 That's my own boot, and I remember it because of 158 00:08:39.519 --> 00:08:42.600 what it did to my stomach. It was the toes 159 00:08:42.639 --> 00:08:46.240 that stayed with him, not the size he'd seen big 160 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:49.279 bear track. A bear's hind foot can look human to 161 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:52.039 a man who wants it to. But these had toes 162 00:08:52.039 --> 00:08:55.120 that gripped where the thing pushed off going up the bank. 163 00:08:55.279 --> 00:08:58.759 The toes dug in and dragged the mud. Five of 164 00:08:58.799 --> 00:09:03.360 them splayed with an arch behind a bear's flat footed 165 00:09:03.399 --> 00:09:07.480 Earl said, Bella told me later the words plantigrade. This 166 00:09:07.519 --> 00:09:09.679 had an arch in it, like you and me. It 167 00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:13.399 walked the way we walk. Heel, then roll, then push 168 00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:16.279 off the toes. I've stepped in enough mud in my 169 00:09:16.360 --> 00:09:19.480 life to read a footprint that wasn't an animal's gait. 170 00:09:20.440 --> 00:09:22.720 It came to a head on a hot still day 171 00:09:22.799 --> 00:09:25.639 in August. Earl set a choker on a big fur 172 00:09:25.759 --> 00:09:29.000 down in the draw and signaled Arnie. The kid blew 173 00:09:29.039 --> 00:09:31.879 the line of whistles. The log came alive and started 174 00:09:31.919 --> 00:09:35.240 grinding uphill. Earle stepped back into the brush to be 175 00:09:35.320 --> 00:09:38.320 clear of it, into a wall of head high salal, 176 00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:41.919 and he wasn't alone in there. Earle turned his coffee 177 00:09:41.960 --> 00:09:45.039 cup on the table. A while I didn't see a face. 178 00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:47.440 I saw a back and a shoulder in an arm 179 00:09:48.120 --> 00:09:51.440 maybe twenty feet off downhill of me, bent over in 180 00:09:51.519 --> 00:09:56.000 the salal. It was crouched dark. The hair on it 181 00:09:56.039 --> 00:09:59.639 didn't lay like a bear's coat. A bear's coat lay slick. 182 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:03.440 This hung longer, and it hung off the arm and 183 00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:07.480 the shoulder, and the shoulder was wrong, too wide, set 184 00:10:07.519 --> 00:10:10.240 too high, and the arm coming down off it was 185 00:10:10.279 --> 00:10:12.879 too long. The whole of it bent over like that 186 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:15.039 was still bigger than it had any right to be. 187 00:10:15.759 --> 00:10:18.000 If it had stood up straight, I don't know what 188 00:10:18.039 --> 00:10:21.440 i'd have done. I think about that it never stood up. 189 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:24.039 I think that's part of why I'm sitting here talking 190 00:10:24.080 --> 00:10:28.639 to you. The log ground uphill behind him, Earle stood 191 00:10:28.679 --> 00:10:30.840 caught between the noise of the machine and the thing 192 00:10:30.879 --> 00:10:33.799 in the brush. His body would only do one thing, 193 00:10:34.200 --> 00:10:37.919 which was go still. The thing wasn't looking at it. 194 00:10:37.919 --> 00:10:41.879 Its head was turned downhill toward the creek. Earle had 195 00:10:41.879 --> 00:10:44.279 the sense it hadn't marked him, because the yard aer 196 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:47.159 covered the sound of him. The machine was the only 197 00:10:47.200 --> 00:10:50.480 reason he was still a secret. Then it moved. It 198 00:10:50.559 --> 00:10:53.080 went downhill, and it didn't crash off the way a 199 00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:57.480 startled animal crashes. It went through that salal almost without 200 00:10:57.519 --> 00:11:01.320 a sound, Earle said, head high, brush thick, and it 201 00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:04.200 went through it in three or four long moves. The 202 00:11:04.240 --> 00:11:06.919 brush closed up behind it, and then there was nothing. 203 00:11:07.879 --> 00:11:10.320 A second later. The only proof I had that I'd 204 00:11:10.360 --> 00:11:14.080 seen anything was my own legs. They'd gone to water. 205 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:17.039 I sat down on a stump and put my head 206 00:11:17.039 --> 00:11:20.480 between my knees. Up at the landing, the chasers cussing 207 00:11:20.519 --> 00:11:22.840 me over the whistle for not setting the next choker, 208 00:11:23.159 --> 00:11:25.039 and I couldn't have set one right then to save 209 00:11:25.080 --> 00:11:28.759 the company. He didn't tell anybody for two days. When 210 00:11:28.759 --> 00:11:31.559 he finally told Dell, Dale didn't laugh and didn't call 211 00:11:31.639 --> 00:11:34.679 him a liar. Deal had set chokers on a show 212 00:11:34.759 --> 00:11:37.559 up in Washington back in the thirties. He said, the 213 00:11:37.559 --> 00:11:39.879 same kind of thing had run them off a side once. 214 00:11:40.720 --> 00:11:43.200 The old hands there had a name for it. The 215 00:11:43.279 --> 00:11:46.879 name wasn't Bigfoot. Nobody said Bigfoot in nineteen fifty eight. 216 00:11:47.440 --> 00:11:50.519 The name was just the big fellow. You said it low, 217 00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:52.519 the way you'd say a thing about a man whose 218 00:11:52.559 --> 00:11:55.440 attention you didn't want to draw. Dale told me to 219 00:11:55.519 --> 00:11:59.080 keep setting chokers and keep my mouth shut. Earle said, said, 220 00:11:59.080 --> 00:12:01.919 as long as it kept it its distance, we'd keep cutting. 221 00:12:02.559 --> 00:12:05.480 If it didn't keep its distance, we talk about it. Then. 222 00:12:06.320 --> 00:12:09.320 Earl smiled a little. The only time in the whole telling. 223 00:12:10.159 --> 00:12:13.320 That was the entire company policy on it. Keep cutting 224 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:16.320 unless it gets closer. We finished the show in September. 225 00:12:16.559 --> 00:12:19.799 It kept its distance. The dogs balked some mornings and 226 00:12:19.840 --> 00:12:22.960 not others. The tracks came and went with the dogs. 227 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:25.440 No man on that crew ever stood up in a 228 00:12:25.480 --> 00:12:29.039 tavern and told it. Far as I know, he didn't 229 00:12:29.039 --> 00:12:31.480 tell it himself for the better part of three decades. 230 00:12:32.240 --> 00:12:34.840 Then a grandchild asked him why he wouldn't go camping 231 00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:37.720 of all things, and the whole of it came out 232 00:12:37.759 --> 00:12:41.200 at a kitchen table. The kid was ten and probably 233 00:12:41.240 --> 00:12:44.440 a little too young to hear what his granddad told him. 234 00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:46.559 I'll tell you the part I chew on, Earl said 235 00:12:46.600 --> 00:12:49.480 near the end. It wasn't looking at me. It was 236 00:12:49.480 --> 00:12:52.799 looking downhill, at the creek, at the men crossing on 237 00:12:52.840 --> 00:12:55.399 the log down there, four or five of them. I 238 00:12:55.399 --> 00:12:58.120 could see from where I stood. It was watching the 239 00:12:58.159 --> 00:13:01.559 men work. I've won ever since. How many mornings it 240 00:13:01.639 --> 00:13:03.840 stood in that brush at the edge of our show 241 00:13:04.159 --> 00:13:06.759 and watched us cut down its country before the one 242 00:13:06.840 --> 00:13:09.399 day the machine got loud enough that I backed up 243 00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:13.519 into it. Three years later, Earl gave me a second story. 244 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:17.039 By nineteen sixty one, Earl had moved to a bigger outfit. 245 00:13:17.480 --> 00:13:20.519 He was running a chainsaw himself, now a mall saw 246 00:13:20.600 --> 00:13:22.759 he hated, and then a McCulloch he came to love. 247 00:13:23.679 --> 00:13:25.440 They sent him up with a small crew to fall 248 00:13:25.480 --> 00:13:27.519 and bucket unit on the far side of a long 249 00:13:27.639 --> 00:13:30.960 lake in the Cascades. It was easier to reach by 250 00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:34.320 water than by road. Four of them lived in at 251 00:13:34.360 --> 00:13:36.399 a spike camp on the lake shore for the better 252 00:13:36.399 --> 00:13:39.600 part of two weeks. They had a wall tent, a 253 00:13:39.639 --> 00:13:42.840 sheet metal cook stove, and a battered aluminum boat. They 254 00:13:42.919 --> 00:13:45.200 used to cross to the unit each morning and back 255 00:13:45.240 --> 00:13:49.080 each night. The four were Earl, a faller named Walt, 256 00:13:49.399 --> 00:13:52.120 a young bucker named Dean, and the man who ran 257 00:13:52.200 --> 00:13:55.159 the boat and did the cooking. Walt was twenty years 258 00:13:55.240 --> 00:13:58.480 older and had falled timber since before the war. Dean 259 00:13:58.600 --> 00:14:02.399 never shut up. The cook Earl called Pop, and he 260 00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:05.440 never learned his right name. There was a dog too, 261 00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:09.759 Walt's dog, a wiry brown shepherd looking thing called Be, 262 00:14:10.600 --> 00:14:13.840 short for something. Walt never said. Be slept in the 263 00:14:13.879 --> 00:14:16.799 tent with the men and had opinions about everything. Be 264 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:19.080 had a thing she did at the flap of the tent. 265 00:14:19.159 --> 00:14:22.279 At night. Earle said she'd put her nose out and 266 00:14:22.360 --> 00:14:26.080 read the air. Most nights she'd snort, turn around and 267 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:29.360 flop down by Walt Like that settled it. After about 268 00:14:29.360 --> 00:14:32.480 the fourth night up there, she quit flopping down. She'd 269 00:14:32.559 --> 00:14:35.799 read the air and then back up, walk backward into 270 00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:39.240 the tent, never turned her tail to the door. She'd 271 00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:42.159 get herself between Walt's bed roll and the canvas wall 272 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:45.879 and stay there shaking. Once be started that, she did 273 00:14:45.919 --> 00:14:49.000 it every night till we left. The unit ran down 274 00:14:49.039 --> 00:14:51.559 a slope to the water on the far shore. The 275 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:55.279 work was ordinary at first, falling bucking, decking logs by 276 00:14:55.320 --> 00:14:58.360 the water to be rafted out later, But Earle started 277 00:14:58.399 --> 00:15:01.240 noticing things over there in the daylight before the camp 278 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:04.480 ever got bad at night. Stay tuned for more Backwoods 279 00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:10.039 bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. The first 280 00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:12.799 was a stretch of young hemlock and vine maple at 281 00:15:12.840 --> 00:15:16.600 the edge of the cut. The tops were twisted, not broke, 282 00:15:16.679 --> 00:15:20.679 he said, twisted saplings about as big around as your wrist, 283 00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:24.120 bent over the tops, wound around each other and tucked 284 00:15:24.519 --> 00:15:28.000 six seven foot off the ground, more than a man 285 00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:30.879 could reach without something to stand on, and there wasn't 286 00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:34.000 anything to stand on. Walt looked at that a long 287 00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:36.879 time and didn't say what he thought. I didn't ask. 288 00:15:37.519 --> 00:15:40.240 I'd seen Walt's face go like that before, and I'd 289 00:15:40.279 --> 00:15:43.639 learned the hard way to leave him be. The second 290 00:15:43.720 --> 00:15:46.919 daytime thing was a fish. Dean kept a stringer of 291 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:49.720 trout in the lake, off the log raft for the cook. 292 00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:52.879 One morning, the stringer came up with the fish gone, 293 00:15:53.080 --> 00:15:56.120 but the stringer still tied off, still looped through where 294 00:15:56.159 --> 00:16:01.559 the fish had been, neat, not chewed, snapped like a 295 00:16:01.600 --> 00:16:04.399 man had slid them off one at a time. An 296 00:16:04.440 --> 00:16:07.639 otter doesn't do that. A bear takes the stringer in all. 297 00:16:08.519 --> 00:16:12.399 Pop blamed an otter anyway, loud about it. Earl had 298 00:16:12.399 --> 00:16:15.679 noticed Pop blaming things loud that summer, louder when he 299 00:16:15.679 --> 00:16:19.480 didn't believe himself. Dean went the other way. The kid 300 00:16:19.480 --> 00:16:21.960 who never shut up started eating his supper fast and 301 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:25.039 turning in early, and one evening Earle found him down 302 00:16:25.039 --> 00:16:27.240 at the boat, checking the gas can and the oars, 303 00:16:27.879 --> 00:16:31.080 not saying why, just making sure they'd start and pull 304 00:16:31.159 --> 00:16:34.360 if it came to that. I pressed Earl on Walt. 305 00:16:34.759 --> 00:16:36.919 Walt was the one man on that crew who never 306 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:40.080 reached for a comfortable answer, and Earl said Walt had 307 00:16:40.080 --> 00:16:43.159 a reason. Walt told him about it the second week 308 00:16:43.399 --> 00:16:45.679 after it was over, when they were back at the 309 00:16:45.720 --> 00:16:49.000 main camp, passing a bottle, he'd had a night like 310 00:16:49.039 --> 00:16:53.440 it once before. Up the Skagt nineteen thirty eight, a 311 00:16:53.480 --> 00:16:55.759 whole crew got gear thrown at them out of the dark. 312 00:16:56.480 --> 00:16:59.240 One man, by his own account, was picked up off 313 00:16:59.240 --> 00:17:01.399 the ground and said down again a few feet over. 314 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:06.240 Not hurt, just moved like somebody had shifted a chair 315 00:17:06.279 --> 00:17:09.359 out of the path. Walt said. The man who got 316 00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:12.920 moved never worked timber again. Earle told me went to 317 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:15.599 the coast and dug clams the rest of his life. 318 00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:19.440 Walt said he'd believe that man's story. The first hard 319 00:17:19.519 --> 00:17:23.119 night came with rocks they'd eaten and turned in the 320 00:17:23.160 --> 00:17:26.920 stove ticked as it cooled. Somewhere past full dark, a 321 00:17:27.039 --> 00:17:28.880 rock came out of the trees and hit the lake. 322 00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:33.359 Earl knew the sound a stone hitting deep water, that 323 00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:37.759 round hollow plunk, Then another, then one off the boat, 324 00:17:38.519 --> 00:17:40.759 a clang off the aluminum hull where it was pulled 325 00:17:40.839 --> 00:17:43.680 up on the gravel, loud as a struck bell in 326 00:17:43.759 --> 00:17:48.039 all that quiet, pop says kids, Earle said, and laughed 327 00:17:48.039 --> 00:17:51.440 at himself for it. Picture where we were a full 328 00:17:51.519 --> 00:17:54.440 day's travel by water from the nearest road end, no 329 00:17:54.559 --> 00:17:57.359 road end at all, no earthly reason for a living 330 00:17:57.359 --> 00:18:00.279 soul to be on that shore in the dark. CoP's 331 00:18:00.279 --> 00:18:03.960 first word is kids, because that's what the mind reaches for. 332 00:18:04.680 --> 00:18:08.160 Anything but the real thing. The mind will hand you kids, 333 00:18:08.680 --> 00:18:12.599 an otter, a falling branch, anything with the name you 334 00:18:12.680 --> 00:18:16.920 already own. Walt didn't say kids. Walt sat up and 335 00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:19.759 went still and told the others to quit talking. The 336 00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:24.200 rocks kept coming, not a barrage, one, then a weight, 337 00:18:24.839 --> 00:18:28.480 then another, from different points along the tree line. The 338 00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:31.519 spacing was the worst of it. A rock slide doesn't 339 00:18:31.519 --> 00:18:36.079 pace itself, a rolling stone doesn't change its address. Something 340 00:18:36.160 --> 00:18:39.440 was throwing, and it was moving between throws in no hurry, 341 00:18:39.960 --> 00:18:42.519 walking the tree line and lobbing stones at the camp 342 00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:46.160 like a man skipping rocks to pass an evening. Dean 343 00:18:46.240 --> 00:18:49.000 wanted to go out with the lantern and look. Walt 344 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:52.359 told him to sit down. They argued. Dean said they 345 00:18:52.359 --> 00:18:55.079 couldn't just lay there and take it. Walt said that 346 00:18:55.200 --> 00:18:58.319 was exactly what they were going to do. What ended 347 00:18:58.359 --> 00:19:01.519 the argument was b She'd been pressed against the back 348 00:19:01.559 --> 00:19:05.279 wall the whole time. She broke into a steady, low growl, 349 00:19:05.359 --> 00:19:08.160 aimed at the lakeside wall of the tent, every hair 350 00:19:08.279 --> 00:19:11.680 standing by then. It wasn't in the tree line. It 351 00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:14.599 was between the trees and the tent. They could hear it, 352 00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:18.559 not footsteps, exactly, but the gravel of the shore shifting 353 00:19:18.640 --> 00:19:21.960 under a slow, great weight and a breathing Earl swore 354 00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:24.920 was too low and too big, with a catch in it, 355 00:19:25.480 --> 00:19:29.279 like a deep chested man breathing through his mouth. You 356 00:19:29.319 --> 00:19:31.880 want to know what we did, Earle said, I'll tell 357 00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:35.720 you straight nothing. Four grown men in a rifle, and 358 00:19:35.759 --> 00:19:38.839 we did nothing. Walt had a thirty thirty in the tent. 359 00:19:39.519 --> 00:19:42.839 It was across his lap and he never raised it. Afterward. 360 00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:45.480 I asked him why. He said, you don't shoot at 361 00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:47.359 a sound in the dark when you can't see the 362 00:19:47.400 --> 00:19:50.279 size of it. All you'll do is make it mad 363 00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:53.039 and tell it just where you are. He was right, 364 00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:56.640 truth was, none of us could have lifted our arms. 365 00:19:57.160 --> 00:19:59.799 Scared took the strength right out of us. I'd never 366 00:19:59.839 --> 00:20:02.599 had at it before that night, twenty five years old. 367 00:20:03.200 --> 00:20:06.000 Never wanted it again. I got it twice more in 368 00:20:06.039 --> 00:20:09.079 my life, and both times I knew it right off 369 00:20:10.279 --> 00:20:12.519 the weight moved along the lake side of the tent 370 00:20:12.920 --> 00:20:17.119 end to end slow. Once something brushed the canvas high up, 371 00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:20.839 higher than a man would reach. A slow drag along 372 00:20:20.880 --> 00:20:23.599 the slope of the wall tents roof. The whole tent 373 00:20:23.680 --> 00:20:28.200 shivered with it became undone. Then it left, the same 374 00:20:28.279 --> 00:20:32.359 slow weight, going back across the gravel toward the trees, unhurried, 375 00:20:32.759 --> 00:20:36.599 the breathing fading off. A long while later, far up 376 00:20:36.640 --> 00:20:39.400 the slope came a single sound none of them could name, 377 00:20:40.039 --> 00:20:44.960 not a howl, not a scream, something between. It rose 378 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:48.880 and fell the once and quit. Nobody slept. When the 379 00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:51.440 gray finally came up over the lake, the four of 380 00:20:51.480 --> 00:20:55.440 them went out together, all four, nobody willing to be 381 00:20:55.480 --> 00:20:58.359 alone on that shore. Even in the light. They read 382 00:20:58.400 --> 00:21:02.039 the ground revel won't take a track, good, Earle said, 383 00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:04.720 But there was a soft strip up where the gravel 384 00:21:04.759 --> 00:21:08.160 met the doff needles and dirt. There were prints in it, 385 00:21:08.519 --> 00:21:10.880 same as I'd seen by the creek three years before, 386 00:21:11.359 --> 00:21:14.400 only bigger. And here's the thing I'll carry to the grave. 387 00:21:15.079 --> 00:21:17.039 They came down out of the trees and walked to 388 00:21:17.119 --> 00:21:19.839 the back of the tent, and at one spot right 389 00:21:19.880 --> 00:21:21.880 behind where Walt and I had laid with about a 390 00:21:21.960 --> 00:21:24.799 quarter inch of canvas between us and it. There were 391 00:21:24.799 --> 00:21:28.440 two of them set side by side deep where it 392 00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:32.200 had stood still. It stopped behind us and stood there 393 00:21:32.920 --> 00:21:36.160 how long I can't tell you. Then it walked on. 394 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:39.640 Walt looked at those two deep prints a good while. 395 00:21:40.359 --> 00:21:42.359 Then he went and got his gear and started carrying 396 00:21:42.400 --> 00:21:44.720 it down to the boat. The rest of us did 397 00:21:44.759 --> 00:21:48.359 the same. Nobody called a voat. Walt started carrying gear 398 00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:51.319 to the boat, and the rest of us followed. They 399 00:21:51.359 --> 00:21:54.279 loaded the boat and left the unit half cut. They 400 00:21:54.359 --> 00:21:56.440 ran the length of that lake in the early light, 401 00:21:56.519 --> 00:21:59.440