Bigfoot: Tracking the Bigfoot trackers

Bigfoot Encounters

Tracking the Bigfoot trackers
They're dedicated, they're picky and they're an endangered species.

By Phil Busse

Three concrete molds of large feet lie in the grass at the base of Richard Noll's truck. They're about the size of a frying pan, and stand out distinctly against the dry, brown grass. Noll says they are impressions left behind by Bigfoot as it walked alongside a riverbank somewhere in the dark recesses of the Pacific Northwest. He won't say exactly where. It's claimed by believers like Noll that Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a living species of giant primate.

The annual Bigfoot Daze conference, held on the fringes of Carson, a small town in Washington State, is a gathering point for a loose community of Sasquatch enthusiasts. Noll arrived the day before and, in the late afternoon, explained to a group of about 50 believers how to determine whether a footprint is a hoax.

Like hundreds of other Bigfoot enthusiasts, Noll is fiercely independent, but at the same time drawn to a community that provides a stage for him to express his unwavering belief that Bigfoot is out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered.

"It would be kind of sad if we found Bigfoot," Noll says suddenly, unexpectedly. "Without the possibility of Bigfoot there is no wilderness left." He pauses again and adds, "The possibility of Bigfoot is the possibility of wilderness."

Whether it's a shadow in the wilderness that can't be explained, or a strange noise in the dark, Bigfoot is about believing. A smattering of Bigfoot enthusiasts has coalesced into a small but energetic group of believers over the last 15 years. There were 15 bona fide organizations around North America by 1998, with an estimated 2,000 self-proclaimed Bigfoot seekers — almost as many as the number of Bigfoot supposedly roaming the backcountry.

There's a group of neighbors in Placerville, Calif., who routinely meet and talk about Bigfoot's whereabouts in Northern California. In Washington, a man named Cliff Crook signed up his wife and son to form Bigfoot Central. Even in Maine (about as far away from Bigfoot in the U.S. as one can get), a group of so-called cryptozoologists pour over hair follicles, footprints and a grab bag of evidence.

Here in Oregon, the self-proclaimed largest Sasquatch organization in the world, the Western Bigfoot Society (WBS), meets for lunch every Tuesday at the Lighthouse Café in the blue- collar town of Linton, about five miles north of Portland. The numbers attending vary from 4 to 15.

"I don't know why we started meeting on Tuesdays," says WBS director Ray Crowe. "I think it started because I had something to do the other days of the week." At the lunch meetings, the subject of Bigfoot is almost as elusive as the creature itself, bobbing in and out of conversation about the members' grandchildren and the Lighthouse lunch specials.

About 10 people are seated around a heavy oak table at my first meeting with the WBS. "I'm not a believer or a nonbeliever," claims Lloyd, a retired veterinarian. He wears a wide- brimmed hat and has the personality of a kind uncle who pulls quarters from your ear. He goes on to tell me that for centuries, there were rumors about giant black-and-white bears roaming the alpine hinterlands of China. Then, in 1936, the first panda bear was captured. "It was all bullshit until then," he says. "There is new stuff out there all of the time."

Lloyd jerks a thumb toward the densely green hills flanking the restaurant. "There are millions of acres of forest," he says. "You could hide an elephant up there." These people are chummy — Bigfoot is both a reason and an excuse for meeting. While the reality of the beast may be a bit hazy, the idea of it remains enough of a core for this motley subculture.

"This is the last, greatest hunt in the world," says Sam. "It gives us a reason to look at the hills differently." In 1993, Sam (who prefers not to use his real name) spotted what he believes were three Bigfoot standing in a quarry at the base of Saddle Mountain, near Seaside. But even he has his doubts. "To a lot of people I have to ask: Are you really trying to find this thing or are you just enjoying a mystery?"

Paradoxically, as long as Bigfoot is never captured, these groups will have a reason to exist. Until then, there are no absolute answers for those attending these meetings, only speculative questions: Is Bigfoot a herbivore or a carnivore? Friendly or mean? And, well, does he even exist?

Any gathering of humans develops its own invisible hierarchies and rules for belonging, from sorority girls to NASA. The interior dynamics of the Bigfoot community are no different, with gripes ranging from petty personality conflicts to serious theoretical disputes.

Even the amiable and polite Crowe has his detractors. They believe that putting an open and public face on the Bigfoot community plays too much into the general public's perceptions about the creature. After years of ridicule, from tabloids claiming that Sasquatch has taken Marilyn Monroe as his bride to Nike using the elusive beast as a foot model for a national television campaign, there is a discernible opinion that the community should shield itself from the public and shape its image. One longtime tracker stopped attending the annual Bigfoot Daze after Crowe organized a wedding ceremony two years ago, where the groom wore a gorilla suit. "He's playing into the parody factor," said the detractor, who preferred to stay anonymous.

Noll, a globally recognized engineer from Edmund, Washington, bemoans that Crowe "just collects information." To Knoll, who painstakingly tries to filter reliable accounts from the hoaxes and "crazies," such an approach is undisciplined. "He just presents what he gets and doesn't analyze it."

There is no common profile of a Bigfoot enthusiast, but most are earnest, over 40 and financially stable. Many have advanced degrees and enjoy the outdoors. Some have a military background. What's more, simple "willingness to believe" is not necessarily a ticket to join this group. "There is no clear policy," concludes one insider, referring to the unspoken rules that govern admission. But clearly, he continues, some people get "cold shouldered." Among the cold-shouldered are UFO "weirdos" ("they give the whole thing a bad name!" one WBS member exclaims) and the greatest pariahs of the community, "the hoaxers" — those who plant phony footprints in the wilderness or claim sightings. Some hoaxers are simply pranksters; others are current members looking to gain favor from a community that, to a large degree, ranks its members on the amount of information one possesses about Bigfoot. There are two roads to belief, and ever since Galileo proclaimed that the earth was not the center of the universe, these paths have taken different routes. One road is less an actual pathway than a single leap of faith; the true, unflinching believer starts with the premise that God, reincarnation, Santa Claus or Bigfoot exists. From here, true believers cast their belief backward, lining up breadcrumbs to show how they reached this point. Unexplained twists of fate, miracles, weird noises in the dark, broken tree branches and the unexplained suddenly add up to a graspable reality.

A handful of members begin to talk at another WBS meeting about some of the people who have cycled through their organization — and why those people aren't around anymore. One member was upset about a tracker who had borrowed his camper about a year ago for a backwoods Bigfoot excursion. "He must've gotten drunk and walked on the roof," the member said. "The damn roof leaked after he dropped it back off." His wife quickly adds: "And, he left the thing without any gas!"

The members at the lunch table then begin to discuss other former members whose credibility fell short of the group's standards. "You can tell the guys who will eventually see Bigfoot," says one member. "They talk themselves into it," adds Theata Crowe, from the far end of the table.

Lloyd, the retired vet, leans toward me and says, "More like smoke themselves into it." He smiles and winks at me. Although popular conception may categorize Bigfoot enthusiasts as easy-to-please believers, the serious Bigfoot enthusiast spends four to six days a month on the ground, hiking through remote Pacific Northwest forests, pawing river banks for footprints and combing tree branches for shreds of evidence.

His wife quickly adds: "And, he left the thing without any gas!" The members at the lunch table then begin to discuss other former members whose credibility fell short of the group's standards. "You can tell the guys who will eventually see Bigfoot," says one member. "They talk themselves into it," adds Theata, from the far end of the table.

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