that a group of Shino Mohenu, or “men of snow,” raided his mother’s village in the Kashmiri Himalayas when she was a child. The creatures made off with armfuls of chickens and goats during a particularly bad winter. That was followed by a story from a friend in Vancouver who claimed to have seen a reddish-brown Sasquatch running between trees as she and a friend were hiking in the nearby Coast Mountains. A third, shell-shocked account came from a female work colleague in Toronto who had seen a huge, hairy biped cross a wooded rural road near the Niagara Escarpment, three hours north of the city. The strange thing was that the last two eyewitnesses had had almost no foreknowledge of the Bigfoot phenomenon—yet their descriptions of the animals, down to the most minor details, matched those of classic reports. Though I’d moved on from that incident in Nelson, each story had the effect of rekindling my interest in the subject. By the end of my first trip to the Great Bear Rainforest, where I had met Clark Hans while on assignment, my lifelong curiosity about the mystery had reached fever pitch.
Why are many otherwise normal people from different walks of life seeing giant, hair-covered humanoids? And why do scores of others who haven’t seen them believe in them anyway, with an unshakable conviction? It seems to be more than just some passing vogue. The Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness Monster, crop circles, spontaneous human combustion, lizard men, and the Chupacabra all had their popularity spikes before falling off the radar like one-hit wonders. Not so with the Sasquatch. It has survived the test of time as successfully as it has avoided capture. Scores of blogs and websites track the latest research developments and eyewitness accounts. Citizen sleuths, armed with the best in affordable technology, have taken up the search in their own backyards—or in secret wilderness “habituation zones,” where they claim to play cat-and-mouse games with the creatures. Documentaries on the subject continue to pour forth and capitalize on an insatiable thirst for wonder. One reality show called Finding Bigfoot, which follows the semi-staged exploits of four Sasquatch hunters in the field, has developed a cult following. The series inspired several offshoots, and for a while garnered some of the highest ratings for the broadcaster, Animal Planet.
There has to be a way to make better sense of the phenomenon: one that doesn’t rely on ready-made positions rooted in unquestioning belief or disbelief; one that moves past the pop-culture veneer and rhetoric of opposing camps and into the more nuanced territory where psychology, culture, history, literature, and indigenous experience overlap. If primeval nature and collective memory are places where the Sasquatch continues to thrive, where better than the Great Bear Rainforest, and its deep-rooted communities, to go in search of it?
* Only 38 percent of the Great Bear Rainforest enjoys full, core protection under the law. The remainder is under stringent management guidelines.
* The Yeti, one of whose original local names was Meh-Teh (Sherpa for “that thing there”), is believed to inhabit the lush mountain valleys of Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and the Sikkim region of India.
* The 16-mm Patterson-Gimlin film, shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin at Bluff Creek in the mountains of northern California, purports to show, in a roughly one-minute segment, a female Sasquatch (with breasts) quickly walking away into the trees. To this day, analysis of the film and the debate over its authenticity continue ad nauseam. However the footage has yet to be debunked. At the risk of adding one more voice to that cacophony, it’s worth mentioning that the figure’s rippling musculature, unusual body proportions, changing facial expressions, and bizarre gait have led Hollywood special-effects people and scientists specializing in bipedal locomotion to state that the film could not have been faked. See Meldrum, Jeff, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. New York: Forge Books, 2007, Chapters 7 and 8.
* I owned a pair of Bigfoot sneakers, made by the Buster Brown shoe company, which featured a humanoid barefoot sole (for making footprints in the mud) and came with a whistle that mimicked Sasquatch vocalizations.
* Dictators and demagogues often whip crowds into an emotional frenzy using a number of cues and techniques to lock their attention while bombarding them with messages and agendas.
* The Kokanee Glacier is an iconic feature of the Selkirk range. It’s also the namesake of a local beer that has pressed the Sasquatch into service as its corporate mascot. Robert said that