Understanding the Hairy Man

Twice in my life I have seen a bigfoot. Each time, the creature I observed was walking away from me – the first time in Pennsylvania near where I live, a mere one hundred yards away; the second time in North Carolina, at a distance in excess of two hundred yards. Each time I was running and got a clear sustained view of a six- to seven-foot tall dark bipedal hairy creature with noticeably broad shoulders and disproportionately long arms hanging down to just above the knees.

In both sightings, the creature vanished from sight in an instant. In the second sighting, because of the distance and the thickness of undergrowth, I will admit that the creature may have quickly stepped off the trail and escaped into the brush. It is the first instance that continues to boggle my imagination to this day.

With the Pennsylvania sighting, the creature was walking with long strides on a paved highway in clear mid-day light inside the white line painted on the edge of the highway. To the right, less than fifty feet away was a broad river with no obstructing brush or debris along its edge other than a few willows. To the left was a steep unclimbable embankment of broken shale rising straight up for most of thirty feet before the slope moderated enough to enable trees to take root. Nothing could climb or jump up this crumbling wall of rock on the left and there was complete visibility on the right.

From the time I spotted the creature until I was standing in its tracks was less than thirty seconds. Stopping for several minutes, I investigated every possibility of escape. Since that time I have run past the same place countless times and continue to conclude that there is no way something that size could escape so quickly given the landscape. It simply disappeared.

There are countless accounts of bigfoots simply disappearing like this. In addition there are a wealth of stories and photographic records of bigfoot tracks simply coming to an end in an open area in the middle of nowhere. In some instances, observers have witnessed the creature literally phasing out of existence right before their eyes. So the big question among bigfoot researchers and curiosity seekers is how these mysterious creatures simply vanish out of view.

There is plenty of speculation about how they may have the ability to pass through portals into another dimension at will, or even raise their vibration enough through frequency modulation so as to appear invisible. It is all very fascinating, but nothing more than quasi-scientific guesswork. What I am more inclined to believe is what empathic scientific researchers have learned from spending years with wild dolphins in their watery home.

Dolphins are purportedly a closer genetic match to humans than apes and chimpanzees. They are our cousins and more like us than different, but different enough to demonstrate perhaps that they have, in many respects, advanced well beyond our current progress along the path of evolution. Like bigfoots, dolphins also have this ability to vanish at will. Because of our growing success at being able to communicate with dolphins, scientists have been able to collect some remarkable answers on this curious topic.

Dolphins perceive what we call portals more like windows in time, or in an interpretation of their language: “the Sometime Place”. They do not dematerialize so much as they enter a temporal timeline. Quantum physicists who study wormholes might call this traversing parallel timelines. Apparently, what we are observing with such disappearances is the merging of temporal timelines. They simply enter dimensions at will that we are unaware of. Our limiting linear-time beliefs do not apply to these creatures, and probably not to a lot of other creatures outside our common experience. Because of their ability to transcend time and space they can drop in or leave whenever it suits them.

Another fascinating possibility is that bigfoots may be able to super-charge the air around them, producing areas of concentrated plasma energy, and then manipulate the area using electromagnetic fields. If they can generate these fields it may not only explain their ability to cloak themselves, but also explain their uncanny ability to “zap” people, causing them to freeze in their tracks, and to disable electronic equipment like cameras and drain batteries. Such a concept is not inconceivable since it is already an established fact that the U.S. military has developed technologies that enable them to cloak, or hide, aircraft and naval vessels from both visual sight and radar.

Can individual humans learn to jump timelines or cloak? It would seem so. Even modern physics admits to the possibility of jumping from one timeline to another. Shamans throughout the ages have demonstrated the ritual ability to disappear or become invisible. A simple search turns up a lot of suggested practices to make this happen. And maybe it already happens frequently in the natural world, usually when someone doesn't expect it – like with all the disappearances in the mysterious triangles all over the world. Just an accounting of all the people who disappear throughout the world every year gives one pause to consider that maybe it's not so exceptional after all - just mysterious or even frightening because of the limitation of our own perception of time and space.

But back to bigfoot – still a mystery in many, if not most, people's minds. Aside from two personal sightings and the personal anecdotes of friends, I have probably had more encounters of one sort or another than most people who take an active interest in the subject.

Most remarkable was a vocal exchange I witnessed in a remote part of Oregon south of Mount Hood at midnight under a full moon – a conversation between two bigfoots – one near me and one at a distance. There were seven vocal exchanges between the two, showing very clear change-ups in inflection and intonation, unevenly spaced, with clear moments of explanation and inquiry. It was a fascinating exchange I recall vividly enough to be able to still imitate.

Aside from seeing plenty of physical evidence and even receiving an answer to my own tree-knocking, I have never seen a bigfoot track in sand or snow. Twice I have been growled at in the early morning hours by something I apparently surprised in the woods. Each time it was clear that I was interrupting something and not welcome. The growls were clearly not canine or feline or ursine as I have been around the usual predators that lurk in the woods my entire life and heard what sounds they make. These guttural sounds were of a lower frequency than I had ever experienced; you could feel the vibration of these growls within your chest. It was a gripping feeling that insured its intent, as in both instances I kept running, but at a quicker tempo, to gain some distance on the unseen force making the growl.

So what do I think bigfoot is? In my opinion, bigfoot is a sapient creature with a good sense of humor, not originally from earth, but a part-time resident here, likely here even longer than we humans. No matter where it is witnessed, I believe bigfoot comes and goes at will from some other place or time. If it is a single species, then it shows variety just like the human species. That includes a variety of temperaments and dispositions as well. Most, I believe, are benevolent, but not all have gentle behavior. You don't want to piss them off. And you don't want to violate their territory.

Genetically, we are certainly related; virtually every life form in the universe that has two legs, two arms, and a face on top is a relative of ours, with genetic encoding that is more similar than different to our own. Bigfoot is not an animal like a bear or a mountain lion or a wolf. It is a sentient being like ourselves with a personality, a playful if not mischievous sense of humor, wide-ranging emotions, and a problem-solving brain. It demonstrates great patience, subtlety, amazing stealth, cautious judgment, and incredible situational awareness. While it may hunt to sustain itself and shit in the woods, it is more of a hairy man of the woods than an ape.

These creatures are very intelligent with many apparent skills that supercede our own. They are reported to have highly developed powers of telepathy and have been able to mindspeak with many humans, just as have dolphins. Bigfoots are almost autistic in their power of memory and attention to organizational detail. Any change in their world is quickly detected. They are hard to trick and masters of camouflage. How else could they have evaded our capture, and notice for the most part, throughout our long cohabitation on this planet?

They are extremely curious about us, especially their children and juveniles, but do not necessarily want to be friends. We think they smell bad and are horrendous in appearance; the perception is probably mutual. Generally, they just want to be left alone.

Given my many years of hunting game animals, I believe bigfoots are expert at reading intention, as most wild animals are. They can sense our presence at a distance, and they instinctively recognize whether our intention is benign or malevolent. They are famous for jamming electromagnetic devices. Game cameras are a waste of time to capture a bigfoot image; they know when cameras are there and either avoid or jam them with some form of electromagnetic energy. If you enter the woods with the intention of finding evidence of bigfoot, they will avoid you, even to the point of not leaving tracks. If you enter their home with an attitude of detachment or acceptance, you are more likely to have a gentle encounter. Taunt them and they can be your worst nightmare. Do not taunt them. Do not attempt to trick them. They will tolerate humans only so far.

Perhaps my best bigfoot story was when I awoke from my tent early one sunny morning at a remote campsite on the Mogollon Rim in Arizona; there were two sun-bleached pelvic bones from a small deer or elk placed carefully just outside the screen door of my tent – placed there during the night by something with a prehensile thumb – either another human or a gentle giant. It was a gift, of sorts. I interpreted the gift as an acknowledgement that I was accepted by the bigfoots there.

Some researchers speculate that there may be only a few thousand bigfoots spread across the globe. I am more inclined to believe they are prolific, that there may be thousands of them in many states, and that they virtually occupy every ecosystem that we do. Chances of a bigfoot encounter may, in fact, be better closer to where we live than in some remote wilderness simply because the food opportunities are much greater closer to civilization. The same goes for any other predator or scavenger.

If you see one creature, it is generally not alone. They don't exist as solitary creatures. Bigfoots have extended family networks, with babies and children, and communities like we do. On one occasion in which I sighted a bigfoot, it was in a fairly populated area, essentially a greenbelt between suburban homes. It was not a random bigfoot just passing through, as evidenced by a large amount of sign of their presence for an entire summer one year, then not thereafter. One need look no further than the greenways, parks, and patches of woods in our own neighborhoods to find an active population likely co-existing right near where we live, mostly out of sight.

I generally accept bigfoot as a part of the world of nature that I spend so much time in; I know the hairy man is there, more often than most believe, and that is okay; I do not fear sharing the woods with another being that just wants to be left alone. If we should ever encounter each other again, I expect it will lead to another good story. If we don't, we will just continue to do our own thing with an accepting acknowledgement of the other. I leave them alone, and they do the same with me. I have the same agreement with bears and rattlesnakes – you don't bite me, I won't shoot you. It is a pact that has worked so far. I refuse to express fear over any unfounded concern for something violating this natural agreement that I have with the world of natural things, seen and unseen.