On the Trail of Bigfoot

The Internet is a great place to do research. You can find out that your blind date lied to you about the business he ‘owns.’ You can double-check the side effects of a new medication your doctor has prescribed. You can even find a good price on airline tickets.

You can also drive yourself crazy. You can self-diagnose/misdiagnose; discover that ghostwriters are routinely hired by content mills to write college papers for money; and you can get lost on the trail of BIGFOOT.
The Internet is full of shaky videos, sketches and first person reports of sightings of the big, hairy humanoid monster, also known as Sasquatch.

Is Bigfoot a holdover from an early human — an out-of-time, throwback to another branch of human evolution? Is there a tribe living on the outskirts of the ‘civilized’ world?

With all the great science fiction devoted to time travel and alternative histories, this one is fun to think about. These almost, but not quite, homo sapiens could cross into our world through some distortion in the time space continuum. I like this theory for fiction, but I’m not going to join the Bigfoot hunters in a hopeless attempt to find proof.

There are other great Bigfoot back-stories.

My personal best is, that the tales of Bigfoot started with an overreaction to a hermit in the woods. This loner — maybe even a writer — happened to be spotted on a bad hair day. Living in the woods, with shaggy hair and a heavy beard, he could have worn a coat and boots made of animal skins. The stories rolled from there.

A clever storyteller, my Bigfoot heard the rumors about his ‘monster’ persona when he was in town buying supplies or knocking back a few drinks at the tavern. He then fed the legend with doctored bear prints. He may have even whispered in a fellow drinkers ear that he’d seen the beast in the forest. It would have been a great way to scare off the casual hikers.

And then, like many good stories, those rumors grew into a monstrous legend.