On the trail of the New York bigfoot, Part 2

On the long drive up, I recollected numerous portrayls of bigfoot in pop culture and just a few in high culture. Harry and the Hendersons and the funny Jack Link’s Beef Jerkey “Messing with Sasquatch” commercials are probably among the most well known. The precursor to those might have been the campy cameo sasquatch appearance on The Six Million Dollar Man TV show in the 70’s.

As a kid, I regularly read The Phantom comic strip, which included among the characters a mated pair of white sasquatch-like creatures. When I received as a gift from a girlfriend a copy of Ted Hughes’ short-story collection, Difficulties of a Bridegroom, I was stunned to read the last story, “The Head,” in which fur-trappers kill a sasquatch. Hughes fished in Canada a number of times, and clearly had picked up on the many stories from that country. 

Anything can happen in a story. Anything can happen in real life, too. But, having been on many a wildlife-related venture in various forests, I knew all too well that absolutely nothing might happen on this trip – the hoped-for sound, sighting, glimpse, or track might never become manifest. This could be a camping trip with total strangers and nothing more. I was entirely prepared for that. In fact, I have to say that I expected that, because that’s usually “just how it goes.”

 Closer to the destination, I realized that one thing was for sure: The expedition had hit full-on autumn foliage. The Adirondacks formed a wide blanket of reds, yellows, orange, and green. Daytime would be beautiful. But autumn colors don’t register at night in the glare of a red-filtered headlamp.

 Night-time was going to be prime-time for the crew. Most bigfoot activity is reportedly nocturnal. Over the next three days I wouldn’t go to bed before 2 a.m. each night.

The people of our 13-person expedition began to assemble at a predetermined campsite throughout a cloudy weekday afternoon. The forest was comprised of hemlock and spruce amid maples, birch, and poplars. Nearby elevations reached 700 feet. Rock formations jutted out everywhere. If you read your James Fennimore Cooper, you know this kind of place.

 While we were in an area that saw regular hiking and camping by humans, the BFRO and expedition leaders had placed us right in the middle of a small chunk of land, along a body of water, within hiking distance of a cluster of sightings or other encounters that had occurred in the past five years, some of these accounts posted on the BFRO site, some still in the process of being vetted. (The BFRO classifies reports basically as “Class A,” a visual encounter, and “Class B,” an auditory encounter.) The expedition leader, Nick, had marked his topographical map with an “X” on each encounter location, enough to indicate that we had put ourselves right into the mix. (Note: Nick’s is the only actual name I use, as his first name is used on a publicly available page on the BFRO site.)

Expedition members had communicated on a secure website in the weeks before the expedition, but after meeting everyone face to face, I realized we were about as regular a collection of people as you could imagine – this might have been a Zoning Board meeting, or soccer-parent picnic.

Assembled around me were an ICU nurse, an addiction counselor, a hospital administrator, a high-school teacher, a hotel owner, an artist in graduate school, a high-school student accompanied by his father who was an NYC media professional, a small-businessman from heavy industry, and two very dedicated husband-and-wife research teams. No wild-eyed “monster-hunters” among us, just one very polite but candid skeptic who came with her boyfriend (her point of view was in for a bit of a change).

As for equipment, however, I was far behind the group. I’d come with two digital cameras – good ones – and two Midland walkie-talkies, and these were the sum-total of my technical gear. With these folks, I was surrounded by at least $30,000 in hand-held equipment: thermal imagers, bionic ears, night-vision scopes, and GPS units. One fellow had his 4-wheel-drive vehicle so bedecked with such equipment he could have successfully patrolled the hills of Pakistan.

Unlike other camps I’ve been in, however, there was none of that cajoling, gear-related one-upsmanship: “Ha – that’s last year’s model. Look at this. . .” Everybody was pleasantly fascinated by what excellent device the other person had.

There was, indeed, a social coalescing around the campfire that first night that I’ve never experienced before. I was among a group that had no reason to hide its particular interest. I don’t know how many times friends had stared at my bookshelf, only to remark, “You’ve got some weird books about monsters, don’t you?” and I wouldn’t even use the “S-word” in attempting to explain. Around many a previous campfire, I was the guy telling a strange story that everyone thought I meant as a fright when I really meant to convey an interesting tale of the outdoors (hey, Teddy Roosevelt himself recounted a sasquatch story in his book, The Wilderness Hunter).

Now I was in a group chattering like a bunch of birdwatchers talking about the ivory-billed woodpecker. I would use the word sasquatch in a sentence and automatically wait for the cringe or blank stare, and instead get a thoughtful, commiserating response. (I think the word sasquatch is itself off-putting to many non-interested people – it’s an ungainly, harsh-sounding word like a cross between “squat” and “scratch,” two things polite people don’t do.)

Around 10 p.m. on the first night, the expedition leaders and more experienced hands worked out a strategy:

We broke into three teams. These teams would leave camp together and hike roughly 20 minutes down a main trail. Then Team 1 would hike in deeper for half an hour, Team 2 for 20 minutes, and Team 1 for 10 minutes, spacing ourselves 10 minutes apart on a trail long a swampy arm of the lake, in a line not far from a series of those “X’s” from Nick’s map.

I was radioman for Team 1. I had my walkie-talkie on, and wore an earpiece so radio chatter wasn’t audible. I’d relay info to my team verbally.

The trail was marked, but somewhat rugged, with thorough cross-hatchings ofthick roots, fallen limbs, and large rocks everywhere, as you can see from the photos, at right and below. Red-filtered head-lamp light messes up depth perception, so the ground seems flattened when it’s not. I was mindful of every step. The temperature was in the high-20s, and I was clad in multiple thermal layers (North Face and Ullfrotte) and an outer layer of camouflaged wool to keep quiet. I lugged my stuff in a waist pack.  

Once in place, my four-person team sat down in the dark, switched off our lamps, and everyone went silent. The main task was listening – listening for calls, movement, and another key thing: total wildlife silence. Active animals surrounded us — chipmunks scampered, and a pack of coyotes had loudly answered some whoops and calls the team had made as we’d moved down the trail. Owls called, too. But according to a lot of bigfoot research, when the nighttime animals clam up and stop moving, something else has entered the scene.

The trees themselves, however, can make all sorts of noise, from dropping bark to strange creaking sounds as they sway in the wind. If you don’t know these sounds from experience, and you’re sitting in pitch black a half-hour hike away from camp, you can quickly spook yourself.

But no one was alone, everyone was in radio contact, and we were supposed to be relaxed and talk among ourselves, even laugh a bit, acting as if we weren’t paying attention. That is, not to act like you were hunting something. Our vibe was supposed to be positive, following the thinking that any bigfoot on their nightly roam should be able to pin-point us, realize we were not roving and seeking, just sitting, and then let their curiosity take over.

Also, along the lines of what I mentioned about vocalizations in my previous post, those in our groups who were practiced at imitation howls or who were good at wood-knocking were supposed to periodically cut loose after tipping off the other teams via the radio. There were a couple people capable of one hell of a howl. I didn’t try, knowing I’d probably sound like a very bad Tom Jones imitation and embarrass myself.

About 20 minutes after everyone had been in place and sitting, some knocks and howls completed, Team 2 came on the radio: “Something just moved behind us. Definitely close.”

I confirmed that and told my team. Everyone waited. About 10 minutes later, Team 2 came back on the radio: “It’s still here. We can see it. We’ve got it on the thermal imager. It seems to be pretty big.”

I told my team. Someone said, “Cool.”

Thermal imagers are great, but they have one drawback: Depending upon the make and model, depth perception is a little tricky, and getting a good visual fix on a moving blob of heat isn’t easy, especially with a black & white screen (some are color). So Team 2’s thermal guy was trying to figure out how far away the object was, and trying to see a profile.

 “It’s hiding behind some trees, but it’s still there,” I heard Team 2’s guy say in my ear-piece. “It’s definitely there.” The team was trying to hook up a video-recorder to the thermal imager.

Like all animals, sasquatch do not play by any rulebook, and while the image of the lumbering two-footed beast might stick in the popular consciousness, according to various reports bigfoot have been known to take to all fours or even crawl to keep themselves concealed. This object in Team 2’s imager was staying low to the ground.

For over an hour everyone listened as Team 2 continued to pick up a heat signature from something close by. They even attemped to toss small rocks at it to see if it would move (rock tossing is reportedly another attribute of curious or irritated sasquatch).

My team and I heard nothing during this time. We were situated on a slope, with a high rock face above us, and a rapid incline to the swampy place below us. We were mostly listening – we didn’t have a thermal imager or night-vision scope, and were “roughing it” I suppose. Most of the technology was with Teams 1 and 2.

 Team 2 came back on the radio and asked Team 1, which was farther down the trail, to start moving toward them in an attempt to see if the object would finally move and reveal itself. This, in part, might have arisen out of the suspicion that this figure creating the heat signature was a bedded-down deer, although Team 2’s verbal intensity and descriptions over the radio seemed to surpass that possibility. Team 1 radioed back that they were getting up and moving.

About five minutes after Team 1’s response, my team heard what was without question the sound of a beaver slapping its tail down in the swamp – it did this three times very rapidly, and this slapping was followed by a strange sound that we could only compare to the sound of gravel being poured into water. Beavers are big animals, and we shrugged it off as nighttime beaver business.

About two minutes later came something that made us stop talking: the distinct sound of a large rock being thrown into the water.

We glanced at each other in the near-impenetrable dark. “Did you just hear a big rock thrown into the water?” someone said. We all agreed.

I went on the radio: “Team 1, have you moved down by the water?”

“Negative. We’re moving back along the trail toward Team 2.”

 “Do you hear any noises coming from the water?” I said.

 “Negative.”

 “We heard a rock thrown into the water. Pretty loud.”

 “We didn’t hear that,” Team 1 said.

 “Roger. Out.”

There could, surely, have been someone camping down by the water, and they might have heaved a big rock in the direction of a beaver that awakened them from sound sleep with its tail slapping. But one thing was for sure: a rock had been thrown, and it had hit the water with a resounding splash.

Eventually, Team 1 joined Team 2, and a member from Team 2 began to walk out into the woods to try to get as close as he could to the spot were the object was last seen. But in the dark, in the woods, with two teams of people full of adrenaline, and the difficulties of thermal imaging, the team was not able to coordinate sufficiently to get the daring fellow moved into the exact spot. Eventually, the object was no longer visible in the imager.

By then, my team was on its way back up the trail, moving slowly, and talking quietly, in the hopes of drawing along any curious sasquatch. Bigfoot are known for “stalking” behavior – paralleling a person’s path through the woods, keeping just out of sight, and following over significant distances; this has happened to hunters numerous times on their way from the deer stand back to the truck, or so they’ve reported. Our expedition leader had remarked to us that he had hoped to draw any animals that saw us into following us to base camp.

Whether anything did or did not follow us, I don’t know. I heard nothing on the way out of the woods. Moving up a very steep incline over roots and rocks reminded me of the arduousness I’d read about in The New York Times and Esquire articles covering American troops on missions in the Afghan hills; I was reminded of the incongruent fact that while some Americans are fighting wars other Americans at home get to enjoy themselves outdoors, and I was also reminded how truly grueling it must be to lug much more gear in much rougher terrain in the dark and get shot at while doing so. 

 When I got back to camp, I was beat. I was three hours away from logging a full 24-hours awake, and my brain was starting to quit. I wanted to stay up and talk with the two groups yet to return, but I wondered if I would make sense or remember anything. I crawled into my tent, wrapped myself up in everything warm that I had, and completely konked out — but not before I wondered who or what was throwing rocks in a lake in the middle of nowhere at 1 a.m., and just what had the other team seen?

 [To be continued. . .]