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 --> 00:00:22.839 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 --> 00:00:32.280 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 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:05.280 There's a mile marker about thirty feet off my front bumper, 14 00:01:05.439 --> 00:01:08.359 and nothing else out here but a gravel turnout, a 15 00:01:08.439 --> 00:01:11.560 barbed wire fence, and a wall of timber that starts 16 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:13.599 at the fence and doesn't stop for a long time, 17 00:01:14.480 --> 00:01:18.079 the engines still ticking as it cools. The atlas is 18 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:21.120 on the passenger seat with about forty sticky notes hanging 19 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:23.319 off the edge of it, and every one of those 20 00:01:23.359 --> 00:01:25.640 notes is a stop we haven't made yet on this 21 00:01:25.799 --> 00:01:29.319 road trip we're taking today off the map. I want 22 00:01:29.359 --> 00:01:31.640 to tell you why, and I want to be straight 23 00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:34.480 with you about where I stand before I do, because 24 00:01:34.519 --> 00:01:37.439 I've spent close to forty years chasing things that leave 25 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:40.799 footprints and not much else, and I've learned that an 26 00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:44.439 audience deserves to know what the guy talking believes. I 27 00:01:44.439 --> 00:01:47.120 think there's a real animal out there. I've said that 28 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:49.959 on all my shows for years. I also think the 29 00:01:50.040 --> 00:01:54.040 overwhelming majority of what lands in my inbox isn't that animal. 30 00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:59.200 It's bears, it's people, it's timber cracking at night. It's 31 00:01:59.239 --> 00:02:01.439 a hunter who's been awake since four in the morning 32 00:02:01.519 --> 00:02:03.680 looking at a stump and bad light. And it's a 33 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:06.879 certain number of folks having fun with me for sport. 34 00:02:07.079 --> 00:02:10.400 That's not me being hard on anybody. That's the arithmetic 35 00:02:10.439 --> 00:02:12.599 of the subject. And if you don't hold both of 36 00:02:12.639 --> 00:02:15.280 those ideas at once, you end up believing everything or 37 00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:19.639 believing nothing, and neither one of those is research. So 38 00:02:19.719 --> 00:02:23.960 here's what today is. Five accounts, five people, five parts 39 00:02:23.960 --> 00:02:27.080 of the country. First names only, because that was the 40 00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:29.479 condition attached to most of them, and I don't break 41 00:02:29.479 --> 00:02:32.759 that for anybody. They came in over about two years. 42 00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:36.319 One arrived by email with a scan attached. One came 43 00:02:36.360 --> 00:02:40.120 in an envelope handwritten in pencil. One started as a 44 00:02:40.159 --> 00:02:42.879 phone call and turned into two thousand words on paper 45 00:02:42.919 --> 00:02:45.840 a week later. No two of them are shaped alike, 46 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:48.240 and they came from people who'd never have ended up 47 00:02:48.240 --> 00:02:51.639 at the same table in one hundred years. Let's start 48 00:02:51.639 --> 00:02:54.280 in northwest Montana at three point forty in the morning. 49 00:02:55.080 --> 00:02:57.360 Ray was sixty one when he wrote to me, and 50 00:02:57.439 --> 00:03:00.719 he'd been driving commercially since he was twenty three, mostly 51 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:03.879 regional work out of eastern Washington, and by that March 52 00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:07.159 he'd run the same corridor across northwest Montana so many 53 00:03:07.159 --> 00:03:09.520 times he could tell you where the frost heaves were 54 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:13.520 by the sound the trailer made. He worked nights by choice, 55 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:18.599 empty roads, closed docks, nobody wanting anything from him between 56 00:03:18.639 --> 00:03:21.080 midnight and six in the morning. And I want you 57 00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:24.240 to understand that this is not an outdoors guy. He 58 00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:28.159 doesn't hunt, he doesn't camp. He told me his relationship 59 00:03:28.199 --> 00:03:30.759 with nature is a truck stop parking lot with a 60 00:03:30.840 --> 00:03:33.240 nice view of it. And there's not one line in 61 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:35.800 his account about ever having had the slightest interest in 62 00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:38.960 the subject before that night. Night freight up there in 63 00:03:39.039 --> 00:03:42.240 late winter is its own discipline. The temperature was sitting 64 00:03:42.360 --> 00:03:45.599 right around twenty eight degrees, which is the worst number 65 00:03:45.639 --> 00:03:48.599 on the whole gauge, because a hard freeze at least 66 00:03:48.599 --> 00:03:51.159 holds still, while twenty eight melts through the day and 67 00:03:51.159 --> 00:03:53.800 glazes over after dark and puts a film on the 68 00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:56.159 pavement that gives you nothing at all in a headlight. 69 00:03:57.080 --> 00:04:00.800 Diesel thickens up, airlines freeze if you don't and your tanks. 70 00:04:01.599 --> 00:04:03.879 The deer come down to the road salt and stand 71 00:04:03.919 --> 00:04:06.360 in the ditch with a plow wall of snow behind them, 72 00:04:06.639 --> 00:04:08.719 and when they finally move they come out of ground. 73 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:12.639 Your lights can't reach. That stretch of highway runs between 74 00:04:12.639 --> 00:04:15.240 two different kinds of country and hasn't got much shoulder 75 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:19.040 to spare. North Side falls away into ditch and willow 76 00:04:19.079 --> 00:04:22.399 and tag alder before it flattens into hayground, and the 77 00:04:22.399 --> 00:04:25.160 plow leaves a bank along all of it that's standing 78 00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:28.439 three and four feet high. By march south side, the 79 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:31.600 timber comes almost to the fence line and then climbs 80 00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:34.720 and one hundred yards into that. You're in second growth 81 00:04:34.759 --> 00:04:37.439 spruce and fir thick enough to slow a man to 82 00:04:37.519 --> 00:04:40.839 about a mile an hour in daylight. There are stretches 83 00:04:40.879 --> 00:04:43.399 along there where the only built things inside of eight 84 00:04:43.439 --> 00:04:46.800 miles or the road the mile posts, and a set 85 00:04:46.839 --> 00:04:50.519 of railroad tracks running the same drainage. He'd taken to 86 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:53.160 counting deer that season, which is the kind of thing 87 00:04:53.199 --> 00:04:55.160 a man does at three in the morning to stay 88 00:04:55.199 --> 00:04:58.000 in the game. And he was up to fourteen that night. 89 00:04:58.839 --> 00:05:01.439 I like that detail more more than almost anything else 90 00:05:01.439 --> 00:05:04.920 in his account. And here's why. It tells you where 91 00:05:04.959 --> 00:05:09.199 his eyes were. He wasn't half asleep on the center line. 92 00:05:09.240 --> 00:05:12.959 He'd spent five hours actively scanning ditch lines, which means 93 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:15.439 when something came up out of one, he was already 94 00:05:15.439 --> 00:05:18.319 looking in the right place. Let me tell you what 95 00:05:18.360 --> 00:05:21.319 a headlight actually gives a man out there, because it 96 00:05:21.399 --> 00:05:25.120 matters to everything that follows. Low beams. Put a pool 97 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:27.720 of light on the pavement out to sixty or seventy 98 00:05:27.800 --> 00:05:30.839 yards and pass that. Your picture goes gray and quits 99 00:05:30.879 --> 00:05:34.720 telling you anything. Color's the first thing to go. Depth 100 00:05:34.839 --> 00:05:38.439 goes right behind it. What a headlight is genuinely good 101 00:05:38.439 --> 00:05:41.639 for at that hour is eyes Because nearly everything with 102 00:05:41.720 --> 00:05:44.920 a spine in that country carries a reflective layer behind 103 00:05:44.920 --> 00:05:47.319 the retina that throws your own light back at you 104 00:05:47.399 --> 00:05:50.439 in a hard bright point, And any driver who's run 105 00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:53.079 those roads long enough learns to pick out a pair 106 00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:55.560 of them in a ditch a half mile off and 107 00:05:55.600 --> 00:05:57.519 tell you what he's looking at by the height and 108 00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:00.399 the spacing and the color of the shine. It came 109 00:06:00.480 --> 00:06:03.000 up out of the north ditch, and Ray's first answer 110 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:06.079 was elk, which is a perfectly good answer, because it 111 00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:08.959 was tall, and it was that flat, pale gray. Everything 112 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:11.399 turns at the outer edge of a beam, and there 113 00:06:11.439 --> 00:06:14.399 are elk all through that country. He had about two 114 00:06:14.439 --> 00:06:17.399 seconds of being satisfied with elk. Then it came out 115 00:06:17.399 --> 00:06:19.920 of the ditch onto the road surface, and it did 116 00:06:19.959 --> 00:06:22.839 that on two legs. He says it was about seventy 117 00:06:22.879 --> 00:06:25.399 to one hundred yards away when it cleared the snowbank, 118 00:06:25.879 --> 00:06:28.800 but that's a rough estimate because there's nothing out there 119 00:06:28.800 --> 00:06:32.680 to measure anything against. But no matter the distance, he 120 00:06:32.759 --> 00:06:36.160 watched the crossing from one side to the other, three 121 00:06:36.199 --> 00:06:40.319 strides to cover the westbound lane. Long ones not hurried. 122 00:06:40.879 --> 00:06:43.839 The arms swung heavy and close into the body and 123 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:47.240 hung lower than he expected, hands down around the top 124 00:06:47.279 --> 00:06:50.199 of the thigh. Head sat low and forward on a 125 00:06:50.199 --> 00:06:53.240 shoulder line that ran flat and wide, and he couldn't 126 00:06:53.240 --> 00:06:56.079 find a neck anywhere in it. And to his credit, 127 00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:58.680 he immediately added that a headlight at night is a 128 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:02.279 poor place to go looking for a neck. He'd watch 129 00:07:02.399 --> 00:07:05.480 deer and elk on that road for years, and elk 130 00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:08.199 carries its head way out front on a long neck. 131 00:07:08.920 --> 00:07:12.040 This had nothing like that. At the center line, it 132 00:07:12.079 --> 00:07:14.199 turned its head toward the truck while the body kept 133 00:07:14.199 --> 00:07:17.480 crossing at the same speed, held on him about a second, 134 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:21.480 then faced forward again. Finished the lane, went off the 135 00:07:21.519 --> 00:07:25.279 south shoulder and down into the timber. His hand instinctively 136 00:07:25.319 --> 00:07:28.399 went for the trailer break, but he stopped himself. He 137 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:31.839 had thirty eight thousand pounds of frozen product behind him 138 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:35.959 and old ice on both shoulders. A driver who panics 139 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:39.120 on a road like that ends up jackknife sideways across 140 00:07:39.120 --> 00:07:41.680 two lanes before he ever gets around to thinking about 141 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:44.399 what he saw, so he eased off the gas pedal 142 00:07:44.439 --> 00:07:48.000 and let the truck slow itself down instead. He didn't 143 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:50.680 see any eye shine. All he saw was a dark 144 00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:54.199 face with a heavy brow line. The ground. It went 145 00:07:54.240 --> 00:07:56.839 into climbs away from that shoulder for about a mile 146 00:07:56.879 --> 00:07:59.079 and a half before it drops over into a drainage 147 00:07:59.079 --> 00:08:01.399 with a creek at the bottom, and there's no road 148 00:08:01.480 --> 00:08:03.720 back in there until a forest service two track that 149 00:08:03.800 --> 00:08:06.560 comes in from the east several miles along, and in 150 00:08:06.600 --> 00:08:10.079 march that two track is gated and under snow. Four 151 00:08:10.199 --> 00:08:13.839 or five seconds ditch to timber. He drove eleven more 152 00:08:13.879 --> 00:08:17.639 miles to a wide spot he knew, pulled off, sat 153 00:08:17.639 --> 00:08:20.000 there with the truck running, and ate a sandwich he'd 154 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.680 been saving for the back half of the run. He 155 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:25.000 hadn't planned to stop, and he couldn't have told you 156 00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:28.279 why he did. He checked his mirrors twice while he 157 00:08:28.319 --> 00:08:30.879 was eating. That's the one thing he did that night. 158 00:08:30.920 --> 00:08:33.720 He can't explain to himself, because there's nothing to see 159 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:36.480 in a west facing mirror eleven miles down the road. 160 00:08:37.120 --> 00:08:40.159 He never called it in. Anybody who's worked a job 161 00:08:40.159 --> 00:08:43.519 with the radio already knows why. The first question a 162 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:46.399 dispatcher asks about a report like that is whether the 163 00:08:46.480 --> 00:08:50.200 driver was asleep. The second is whether he'd been drinking. 164 00:08:50.879 --> 00:08:53.320 Both of those questions go in a file, and both 165 00:08:53.320 --> 00:08:56.399 of them outlived the story by about a decade. I 166 00:08:56.480 --> 00:08:59.720 watched the same math run in law enforcement, and it's 167 00:08:59.759 --> 00:09:03.360 never the strange thing that costs you, it's the paperwork 168 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:07.480 the strange thing generates. He slept about five hours at 169 00:09:07.519 --> 00:09:10.720 the dock, ran an empty back west that afternoon, and 170 00:09:10.840 --> 00:09:13.840 was home the following night. He didn't say anything to 171 00:09:13.879 --> 00:09:17.399 anybody for three days. He told his wife three days later, 172 00:09:17.440 --> 00:09:20.120 and she believed him on the spot, which annoyed him 173 00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:23.440 because what he wanted was an argument. He got one 174 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:25.360 from his brother in law a couple of weeks later 175 00:09:25.399 --> 00:09:27.799 at a family thing, who told him in front of 176 00:09:27.799 --> 00:09:30.840 the room that he dozed off and dreamed it. Ray's 177 00:09:30.840 --> 00:09:32.799 answer was that he'd been awake enough to keep his 178 00:09:32.840 --> 00:09:35.440 hand off the trailer breake on ice, and I've got 179 00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:38.480 to say that's a better response than most people manage. 180 00:09:39.080 --> 00:09:41.279 Then he spent the next few weeks trying to talk 181 00:09:41.320 --> 00:09:44.039 himself out of it. A man in a heavy coat 182 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:46.679 was his first candidate, and it lasted about a day 183 00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:50.120 because he kept running aground on the height, on the width, 184 00:09:50.200 --> 00:09:52.759 through the shoulders, and mostly on the fact that a 185 00:09:52.799 --> 00:09:55.000 man crossing a highway in front of a semi at 186 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:58.240 three in the morning does something about it. He runs, 187 00:09:58.799 --> 00:10:02.879 He throws a hand up at minimum, he looks. This 188 00:10:02.960 --> 00:10:07.039 acknowledged the truck exactly once and never changed pace. A 189 00:10:07.080 --> 00:10:09.919 poacher on foot lasted longer, since there'd been talked that 190 00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:13.039 winter about somebody working the ditches with a spotlight, and 191 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:15.759 it died on the same problem because a man out 192 00:10:15.759 --> 00:10:18.440 there with a rifle sees headlights and gets off the pavement. 193 00:10:19.159 --> 00:10:22.279 Bear didn't survive ten minutes because black bears crossed low 194 00:10:22.320 --> 00:10:24.799 and on four legs and in a hurry, and this 195 00:10:24.879 --> 00:10:27.399 crossed with its head above the level of his hood. 196 00:10:28.200 --> 00:10:30.399 He also pulled his own logs for that week and 197 00:10:30.440 --> 00:10:33.159 found ten hours off before the run and a nine 198 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:36.039 o'clock start, which put him six and a half hours in. 199 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:39.039 He told me he'd have been relieved to find something 200 00:10:39.080 --> 00:10:42.399 in that log to explain it away, and there wasn't anything. 201 00:10:43.159 --> 00:10:45.960 He ran that corridor nine more times before he stopped, 202 00:10:46.279 --> 00:10:48.399 and on every one of those trips he went past 203 00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:51.960 the guard rail without slowing down. Sixteen days later, he 204 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:55.240 came back through in daylight on an empty run and stopped. 205 00:10:56.159 --> 00:10:58.559 He parked on the wide shoulder with the flashers going, 206 00:10:58.600 --> 00:11:01.080 and walked back until he found the spot, which he 207 00:11:01.159 --> 00:11:04.559 located by the guardrail, because the guardrail ends right about 208 00:11:04.559 --> 00:11:06.960 there and the thing had come out just past the 209 00:11:07.080 --> 00:11:09.600 end of it. The ditch below it was full of 210 00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:12.840 tag alder. The snow crust in that ditch had been 211 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:15.879 through a melt and a refreeze and sixteen days of 212 00:11:15.960 --> 00:11:18.480 every animal you can think of, and there was no 213 00:11:18.639 --> 00:11:21.399 track that he could make out in the mush. What 214 00:11:21.559 --> 00:11:24.000 was in there was a lane through the alder, a 215 00:11:24.080 --> 00:11:26.360 gap where the whip stems had been pushed over and 216 00:11:26.399 --> 00:11:29.320 broken wide enough to walk through most of them at 217 00:11:29.360 --> 00:11:32.120 about the height of his sternum, with one snapped clean 218 00:11:32.200 --> 00:11:35.639 and left hanging by the bark. Down in the flattened crust. 219 00:11:35.679 --> 00:11:38.799 Inside the lane there were depressions he refuses to call prints, 220 00:11:39.440 --> 00:11:42.440 melted out and rounded off, with no detail left in them, 221 00:11:42.879 --> 00:11:44.440 and he says he could have laid two of his 222 00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:46.720 own boots and to end inside a couple of them. 223 00:11:47.240 --> 00:11:49.559 He stepped the line out, heeled to toe, and came 224 00:11:49.679 --> 00:11:52.799 up with something over four feet between the two clearest ones. 225 00:11:53.639 --> 00:11:55.679 He tried to walk that line and made two steps 226 00:11:55.720 --> 00:11:57.759 before he punched through to his knee and had to 227 00:11:57.759 --> 00:12:00.679 haul himself out by a fistful of alder. His own 228 00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:04.039 boots wouldn't carry him anywhere on that crust. He ran 229 00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:06.879 that road four more years and never saw it again. 230 00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:09.519 For most of that first year, he came off the 231 00:12:09.519 --> 00:12:13.039 fuel at that guardrail on every single pass day or night, 232 00:12:13.440 --> 00:12:15.639 and looked at the alder as long as the headlights 233 00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:18.000 held it. And somewhere in the second winter he quit 234 00:12:18.039 --> 00:12:21.600 doing that. The only lasting change he'll admit to is 235 00:12:21.600 --> 00:12:24.639 that he stopped counting deer because the counting had turned 236 00:12:24.679 --> 00:12:27.720 into watching for something else, and he didn't care for that, 237 00:12:28.039 --> 00:12:30.480 so he put audiobooks on and kept his eyes on 238 00:12:30.519 --> 00:12:33.679 the center line like everybody else. Ask him what it was, 239 00:12:34.039 --> 00:12:36.840 and he won't answer. He says he can describe what 240 00:12:36.879 --> 00:12:39.320 crossed the road in front of him, and that naming 241 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:42.399 it isn't his job. Four or five seconds through a 242 00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:45.320 windshield is how most of these come in, and four 243 00:12:45.399 --> 00:12:47.480 or five seconds is the easiest thing in the world 244 00:12:47.559 --> 00:12:50.159 to take a part afterward. So let's go the other 245 00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:55.360 direction entirely. Let's go to a woman who had elevation, optics, daylight, 246 00:12:55.759 --> 00:12:58.080 and a job that consisted of nothing but looking at 247 00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:00.639 one piece of country for ten hours a day. And 248 00:13:00.720 --> 00:13:06.120 noticing when something in it changed. Northern California, August. Her 249 00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:09.039 name is Nina. The first thing she did was right 250 00:13:09.120 --> 00:13:12.000 down the time in pencil in a government log book 251 00:13:12.200 --> 00:13:16.000 before she did anything else at all, eleven fourteen in 252 00:13:16.039 --> 00:13:20.159 the morning. That's how the account opens. Nina was twenty 253 00:13:20.159 --> 00:13:22.279 three that summer and in her second season on a 254 00:13:22.279 --> 00:13:25.159 fire lookout, the first having been on a different peak 255 00:13:25.320 --> 00:13:29.120 with better road access and worse visibility. She'd finished a 256 00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:33.159 degree in environmental science. Every field job she wanted required 257 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:36.360 experience she didn't have, and somebody told her the lookout 258 00:13:36.399 --> 00:13:39.440 program was hiring, that the money was bad, and that 259 00:13:39.440 --> 00:13:41.759 the solitude would turn out to be either the best 260 00:13:41.919 --> 00:13:44.720 or the worst thing that ever happened to her. If 261 00:13:44.759 --> 00:13:47.480 you've never been in a staffed lookout, it's a small 262 00:13:47.519 --> 00:13:49.840 glass room on a mountain with a bed and a 263 00:13:49.879 --> 00:13:53.759 propane refrigerator and a radio and bolted to a pedestal. 264 00:13:53.799 --> 00:13:56.480 In the middle of the floor is an Osborne firefinder, 265 00:13:56.559 --> 00:13:58.879 which is a brass ring marked out in degrees with 266 00:13:58.960 --> 00:14:01.639 a set of sights on it. You put those sites 267 00:14:01.679 --> 00:14:03.720 on a column of smoke, and you read a bearing 268 00:14:03.759 --> 00:14:06.120 off the ring to within a fraction of a degree, 269 00:14:06.679 --> 00:14:09.320 and a dispatcher who has two bearings from two towers 270 00:14:09.360 --> 00:14:12.399 has a location. That's the entire art of the job, 271 00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:15.720 and it hasn't changed in ninety years. The rest of 272 00:14:15.759 --> 00:14:18.399 the day is weather observations and radio checks and a 273 00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:21.720 horizon scan every fifteen minutes when the fire danger is up, 274 00:14:22.080 --> 00:14:25.120 and a great deal of nothing. She wasn't losing her 275 00:14:25.120 --> 00:14:28.120 mind up there either, and I asked, because it's the 276 00:14:28.159 --> 00:14:31.639 first thing anybody thinks. She had a rhythm, a stack 277 00:14:31.679 --> 00:14:34.720 of books, letters she wrote out longhand because the cell 278 00:14:34.799 --> 00:14:37.360 signal was garbage, and a running feud with the ground 279 00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:40.399 squirrels under the catwalk that takes up more space in 280 00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:44.200 those letters than the sighting does. The ground that matters 281 00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:47.120 is a salvage cut six years off of fire, which 282 00:14:47.159 --> 00:14:50.559 doesn't look like forest and doesn't look like open country either. 283 00:14:51.279 --> 00:14:55.240 You've got standing black snags with the bark sloughing off them, 284 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:58.879 down logs lying every direction, mans Anita coming back in 285 00:14:58.919 --> 00:15:01.720 patches to about waste high on a person, and two 286 00:15:01.799 --> 00:15:04.200 or three long runs where the dirt is bare enough 287 00:15:04.240 --> 00:15:07.360 that anything crossing it has nowhere to be. Stay tuned 288 00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:11.360 for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. 289 00:15:13.480 --> 00:15:16.399 The near edge sat around six hundred yards from the tower, 290 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:19.519 and the far edge closer to a thousand. She scanned 291 00:15:19.519 --> 00:15:21.519 it more than the rest of her country because smoke 292 00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:24.679 had come out of there twice that summer, both times 293 00:15:24.679 --> 00:15:28.320 somebody's abandoned campfire. That peak sat at the end of 294 00:15:28.360 --> 00:15:31.919 eleven miles of dirt off a paved forest highway, and 295 00:15:31.960 --> 00:15:34.240 the last two miles were steep enough that she took 296 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:36.840 them in low range and a government pick up, and 297 00:15:36.879 --> 00:15:40.480 she went down for groceries every ten days. The nearest 298 00:15:40.559 --> 00:15:43.879 year round town was thirty odd miles out. Her regular 299 00:15:43.879 --> 00:15:46.559 company was a road crew that came through twice a summer, 300 00:15:46.759 --> 00:15:48.879 and a packer who ran stock up a trail on 301 00:15:48.919 --> 00:15:52.279 the backside. She caught the movement with her naked eye 302 00:15:52.279 --> 00:15:54.759 on a routine scan and thought it was a bear. 303 00:15:55.559 --> 00:15:57.919 Bears were all over that unit, and she'd watch them 304 00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:00.639 out there more times than she could count, so that's 305 00:16:00.639 --> 00:16:03.360 where her head went first. What made her pick up 306 00:16:03.399 --> 00:16:06.799 the binoculars was height, because the man's anita ran waist 307 00:16:06.919 --> 00:16:09.399 high on a person, and whatever was crossing it was 308 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:12.600 clearing that by a long way through the glass. It 309 00:16:12.679 --> 00:16:15.360 was walking, not standing up to have a look around 310 00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:18.399 and then dropping back down onto all fours, but walking 311 00:16:18.519 --> 00:16:21.240 upright left to right across the open ground with its 312 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:24.000 arms swinging. And she watched it do that from eleven 313 00:16:24.039 --> 00:16:27.320 to fourteen until eleven twenty six. She checked her watch 314 00:16:27.320 --> 00:16:29.480 at the start and again at the end, and wrote 315 00:16:29.480 --> 00:16:33.279 both times down twelve minutes at six hundred yards through 316 00:16:33.279 --> 00:16:36.720 eight power binoculars, you get a silhouette. And that's about it. 317 00:16:37.519 --> 00:16:40.759 She never saw a face, never saw the eyes, never 318 00:16:40.799 --> 00:16:43.159 saw the hands, and the only thing she can tell 319 00:16:43.200 --> 00:16:45.000 you about the ends of the arms is that they 320 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:48.600 didn't change color. What she did have was the shape 321 00:16:48.639 --> 00:16:51.639 of it. The color ran the same from head to foot, 322 00:16:52.080 --> 00:16:55.240 dark brown going to black, and it didn't break anywhere. 323 00:16:55.720 --> 00:16:58.759 And she'd watched enough bears on that exact ground to 324 00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:00.840 know a bear on its high legs gives you a 325 00:17:00.919 --> 00:17:04.720 lighter muzzle and a different texture across the belly. The 326 00:17:04.759 --> 00:17:06.920 shoulders were the widest part of it, and the width 327 00:17:06.960 --> 00:17:10.319 came down through the chest without tapering the way she expected, 328 00:17:10.759 --> 00:17:14.039 and the head sat low and forward. The way it 329 00:17:14.119 --> 00:17:17.599 moved is the part she keeps coming back to. She'd 330 00:17:17.599 --> 00:17:21.319 watched timber crews and archaeologists and a fire crew doing 331 00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:24.079 mop up work that same unit, and people picked their 332 00:17:24.119 --> 00:17:27.240 way through a salvage cut. They step over down wood 333 00:17:27.279 --> 00:17:30.000 and look at their feet while they do it. They stop, 334 00:17:30.559 --> 00:17:33.039 they put a hand on a snag to steady themselves. 335 00:17:33.839 --> 00:17:37.799 This crossed down logs without breaking stride and without looking down. 336 00:17:38.319 --> 00:17:40.160 And when it came to one big enough that she 337 00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:43.920 expected it to go around, it stepped over. And then 338 00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:47.440 in the middle of watching something she couldn't identify, she 339 00:17:47.480 --> 00:17:49.960 got off the stool, put the sights of the fire 340 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:53.279 finder on it, and took a bearing. That number went 341 00:17:53.319 --> 00:17:55.920 in the log with everything else, and it's the number 342 00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:58.039 a crew boss used the next day when she told 343 00:17:58.079 --> 00:18:00.519 him where to go in around on the eight or 344 00:18:00.599 --> 00:18:02.839 nine minute market, stopped at a log on the far 345 00:18:02.920 --> 00:18:05.720 side of the open ground, bent forward at the waist 346 00:18:05.799 --> 00:18:08.759 with both arms down, and stayed like that close to 347 00:18:08.839 --> 00:18:11.400 a minute, with movement in the arms the whole time. 348 00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:14.480 Then it straightened up, and the head came around and 349 00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:17.680 oriented on the tower and held there. She's the one 350 00:18:17.720 --> 00:18:20.079 who points out that a lookout on a bare peak 351 00:18:20.200 --> 00:18:23.720 is the most obvious man made object in that whole landscape, 352 00:18:23.960 --> 00:18:26.599 and that anything with eyes is going to look at it. Eventually, 353 00:18:27.400 --> 00:18:29.440 she sat down on the stool anyway and kept the 354 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:32.480 binoculars up, and by her count, it stayed on her 355 00:18:32.559 --> 00:18:35.079 the better part of half a minute before it moved again. 356 00:18:36.039 --> 00:18:39.480 Then she hit it with the bullhorn. Some towers carry one, 357 00:18:39.880 --> 00:18:43.519 and hers did, for exactly the situation she thought she had, 358 00:18:43.880 --> 00:18:47.160 which is people in a closed unit, a siren and 359 00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:49.519 a voice coming off one hundred feet of steel on 360 00:18:49.599 --> 00:18:52.319 a bare mountain, carries a long way down a drainage 361 00:18:52.319 --> 00:18:55.319 and still morning air. And she'd used it twice already 362 00:18:55.319 --> 00:18:57.839 that summer on vehicles that came around a gate on 363 00:18:57.880 --> 00:19:00.880 a spur road below the peak, and both times the 364 00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:04.400 vehicle turned around inside a minute. She gave this two 365 00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:07.680 blasts of the siren and then her own voice. Nothing 366 00:19:07.720 --> 00:19:10.920 came back at all. It didn't turn its head, didn't stop, 367 00:19:11.279 --> 00:19:15.200 didn't change pace. It finished crossing the bare ground, went 368 00:19:15.240 --> 00:19:17.880 into the standing timber on the north side, and she 369 00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:21.359 never picked it up again. She called dispatch and reported 370 00:19:21.359 --> 00:19:24.079 a subject in a closed unit, since that road was 371 00:19:24.119 --> 00:19:26.680 gated and nobody was supposed to be in there, and 372 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:29.640 nobody in the world radio is a dispatcher about an animal. 373 00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:35.279 In the log book, she wrote unidentified subject bipedal moving 374 00:19:35.319 --> 00:19:39.079 east across the salvage unit. No response to hale, And 375 00:19:39.119 --> 00:19:41.519 she wrote that on a page of pencil entries that 376 00:19:41.640 --> 00:19:44.640 also carries a humidity reading and a smoke check that 377 00:19:44.720 --> 00:19:47.759 turned out to be dust off a county road. She 378 00:19:47.839 --> 00:19:51.039 latched the trap door that night. That tower sat on steel, 379 00:19:51.079 --> 00:19:52.920 with a stair running up through a hatch in the 380 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:55.680 floor and a hasp on the hatch for wind, and 381 00:19:55.759 --> 00:19:58.720 in two seasons she'd never once dropped it. And she 382 00:19:58.839 --> 00:20:01.359 dropped it that night and every night after until she 383 00:20:01.440 --> 00:20:04.640 came off the mountain in October. She didn't sleep much 384 00:20:04.680 --> 00:20:07.200 that night. She had a battery radio up there and 385 00:20:07.240 --> 00:20:09.400 she left it on, and she wrote in the letter 386 00:20:09.440 --> 00:20:12.079 to her sister that she ran the generator later into 387 00:20:12.079 --> 00:20:15.079 the evening than she needed to. A crew boss she 388 00:20:15.160 --> 00:20:17.119 knew drove up to the gate the next afternoon and 389 00:20:17.160 --> 00:20:19.839 walked in a little way because she'd asked him to. 390 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:24.319 He didn't find anybody camped, didn't find a vehicle, didn't 391 00:20:24.319 --> 00:20:27.960 find trash. On his way back out, he mentioned the 392 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:30.480 way you'd mentioned, whether that a log had been rolled 393 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:33.400 out of its bed. She asked how big, and he 394 00:20:33.440 --> 00:20:35.960 said maybe two and a half feet through and long 395 00:20:36.079 --> 00:20:37.920 enough that he wouldn't have wanted to mess with it. 396 00:20:38.440 --> 00:20:40.319 And when she asked whether a bear could do that, 397 00:20:40.440 --> 00:20:42.920 he told her, bears do it all the time. They're 398 00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:46.359 after grubbs. They'll turn anything they can get a paw under. 399 00:20:47.240 --> 00:20:49.480 She said okay and left it alone and never told 400 00:20:49.559 --> 00:20:52.200 him what she'd spent twelve minutes watching the morning before. 401 00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:55.720