Ghosted by Bigfoot

I guess Bigfoot isn’t going to call me back.

I put down the branch after three more solid swings against the tree – TAK! TAK! TAK! – and even though it’s the third set I've done it’s still way louder than I expect for wet wood striking wet wood. I sit back down on the rock, check my watch, and wait some more anyway. Cold Oregon rain taps on the hood of my insulated parka, gentle but insistent, reminding me that I am a very long way from the cozy little lodge I’ve rented for this jaunt. The last leg of my great American cryptid tour. I sip some coffee from my thermos and get comfortable, or as comfortable as you can when you’re sitting on a rock getting steadily rained on in the middle of the woods.

Before you get the wrong idea, I don’t actually expect Bigfoot to answer. That isn’t the point. I’m out here following my Uncle Mike’s carefully worded instructions for meeting various mysterious critters, as I’ve been doing for the better part of the last year. His old cryptid spotting journal is a comforting weight in one of the zipped pouches of my parka, the little black book snugly wrapped in oilcloth against the relentless damp, but I hardly even need to consult it at this point. I memorized the directions to his Bigfoot rendezvous point on the drive up from San Francisco:

"Bigfoot: Take the Strawberry Basin trail until you reach the creek, then follow that until you see the rock face that looks like two guys trying to catch the same fly ball. Take a sharp left off the trail, and about a hundred yards in is a clearing with a large rock. Find a sturdy branch and knock at least nine times, in sets of three, on one of the trees nearby. Repeat as needed until you hear answering knocks, and then get your camera ready!"

Corny, right? But also charming in a kind of crazy way, all of which sums up Uncle Mike. Technically he was my great uncle, but he was one of those people who always seemed twenty years younger than he was. Not because he was in great shape or got plastic surgery, but because he was just so excited by everything. If Uncle Mike had been a comic book character he would have had those starburst excitement lines radiating off him all the time, you know? It was a level of energy that either swept you up and carried you along with him or wore you out in about thirty seconds.

Pretty much everyone else in my family tended toward the latter response, but not me. Uncle Mike was an almost magical figure when I was growing up, showing up once or twice a year at family gatherings with his Bigfoot tie and a new trucker cap with some tacky tourist trap logo on it. He’d pull me into the kitchen and we’d try to sneak desserts ahead of schedule while he told me all about the latest creature he was chasing.

The rest of the family seemed embarrassed by these stories, but I loved them and always bugged him for more. Which was probably why when he passed Uncle Mike left me his most prized possession, his beloved cryptid sighting journal. Well, that and fifteen boxes of heavily annotated occult books and travel guides going back to the ‘70s, along with handwritten instructions to follow in his footsteps and “see the hidden America” everybody else overlooked.

Oh, and twenty grand to make it happen.

Let me tell you, my family was not happy that I was the only one that received anything from Uncle Mike’s estate. His will directed that his other possessions be sold at auction and the proceeds held in trust as, and I’m quoting the great man directly here, “prize money for the first person who proves I’m right and that American cryptids do exist, so take that, Charles.” (Charles being his brother, my grandfather, who according to my sister sighed so hard when he heard this that he seemed in danger of deflating.) I think my relatives had been quietly hoping for a payday since Uncle Mike never married, lived modestly, and had retired early from Lockheed’s engineering corps in the ‘80s. He invented something for them that was such a big deal even just profit-sharing 1% of its value earned him enough money to devote himself to cryptid hunting full time in his forties.

It's important to remember that while supernatural stuff is pretty common in pop culture now, Uncle Mike started a good thirty years before there were entire TV networks dedicated to shows about watching hillfolk with nightvision cameras scare each other and blame it on Bigfoot. So his passion was not exactly well received back then. Nor was my decision to heed his wishes and use the money to follow in his footsteps.

“That’s a down payment on a house,” my parents insisted.

“That’s, like, all of your student loans just gone,” my friends all said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” my sister sighed, getting straight to the point as usual. I’d gone to see her after our parents gave me another round of grief over my plans for the money, and we were eating bowls of her homemade pad Thai on the couch and watching bad sci-fi shows while her husband put their kids to bed. “I know you loved Uncle Mike. I loved him too, even though I didn’t get him like you did. He was always nice. But be smart about this. You don’t have to go running around the country to prove anything to him, or his memory.”

She picked up the worn little black journal, thumbed through it, all those pages of dense handwritten lettering and hasty, eager sketches. “I think he’d be happy if you just read this. I think that’s all he ever wanted, someone else to pay attention to what he was doing.”

“No,” I said, and as I said it I just knew I really was going to do the trip, that it meant something to me beyond being something my parents hated. “He wanted someone to think it was important, because it was. So I’m going to treat it that way, and do it right.” I could tell she still thought I was being an idiot, but she told me if that was really what I wanted, at least I should have fun. She’s a good sister like that.

In the beginning I thought I’d just do the journal from front to back, see it in chronological order as he’d written it, but after making sense of the first dozen entries I quickly revised those plans and plotted an East to West coast adventure instead. Uncle Mike hated flying so I did it his way, driving on as many back roads and side streets as I could as I bounced from chasing one creature to the next. This sort of bombing around is a lot easier now than when he started – thanks GPS – but it’s still an adventure.

I slept in my car more than I expected; I learned my stomach’s tolerance for greasy food (lower than I needed); I heard all kinds of accents and got made fun of for my own; and have broken more trespassing statues than is probably wise to admit in writing. I was expecting weird, and I got it, but I didn’t expect so many different flavors of weird, and how unique they were to the places I went.

I guess what I’m saying is that people who think America has been tamed don’t take enough off-ramps.

When I started out I didn’t intend to start a journal of my own either, but it happened anyway. With apologies to Uncle Mike, though, mine is online and I finish my pictures in an app instead of a darkroom. At first it was just Facebook updates and some Instagram shots, but eventually it took on a shape of its own and I began a separate blog just for the trip. I thought I’d get closer to Uncle Mike out here and I have, no question. Some of the people I’ve run into even recognized me and told me he talked about me, at least when he wasn’t discussing the latest trail cameras or lake monster sightings. It’s been sweet to learn he thought of me the same way I feel about him.

But what I’ve learned most about, besides the fact that you should never buy a pre-wrapped truck stop egg salad sandwich with no clear expiration date, is me. I think that’s why Uncle Mike liked these chases so much. Driving down back roads, camping out in creepy places, talking to strangers in diners, running around in the dark – you learn a lot about yourself. More than that you learn to make peace with yourself, because otherwise you’re in for a lot of uncomfortable miles. And if making peace with myself isn’t worth twenty grand and a year of my life, what is?

Thinking about Uncle Mike and the trip makes me put away my thermos and take out my phone, leaning over to shield it from the rain. I scroll back to the beginning of my blog and start clicking on some of my favorite updates. A lonely, sandy road in the Pine Barrens that I camped out on one night since it’s supposedly the site of the most Jersey Devil sightings anywhere. Arm around a friend of Uncle Mike’s in front of the Mothman statue in Point Pleasant, then pictures of the spooky old bunker we found in the woods nearby. The night in the ER from that ill-advised egg salad in Ohio. I groan a little at that memory but keep flipping.

Me posed outside a tourist trap in Roswell, just minutes before I learned that the owner and the regulars all knew Uncle Mike by name and they told me a story about him, a fake UFO, and a sheriff’s daughter I didn’t quite believe but couldn’t stop laughing at.

Pulled over on the side of Bray Road, looking away out over farm fields that gleam like sheets of copper in the light of a giant harvest moon overhead.

Fishing in a little boat on Flathead Lake, the water as blue as the sky, the sky as wide as my smile.

So many more, but my vision’s getting blurry. “Thanks, Uncle Mike,” I say, and if the screen has a few drops on it I’m sure it’s just the rain. I take out the journal, feeling I should finish this trip the way he would. The little black book feels warm and rough, almost like his hands. I flip it open to one of the few free pages at the back, the ones he left for me to finish.

I write my Bigfoot trip log in the same careful, detailed way he would, noting my tree knocking attempts, phrasing the lack of an answer the most hopeful way possible. I close by solemnly promising I’ll come back later. It’s the truth, too. There’s still some money left, after all, and even if I haven’t spotted a single cryptid I’ve found some amazing places worth seeing again. I’m just not going to wait as long as Uncle Mike did to share them with someone else.

Journal finished, I wrap it carefully and tuck it in my pocket. I’m halfway back to the trail when I realize I haven’t taken a picture. I could just take one where I am, but for the last picture for the last entry I feel it should be at his spot. I double back, perch on top of the rock, and strike a good pose. Right as the camera clicks I hear it, echoing out from somewhere much deeper in the forest, clear even over my pounding heart:

tak! tak! tak!