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Every sentence after this one will recognize the existence of Sasquatch or Bigfoot or Grassman or Mocassin Joe or any other of its names to be an established certainty. You don’t hear about them much on the TV news in Denver, but as recently as June of 2008, there was a possible encounter with one of these beings in Conejos County, and years of evidence suggests that their migratory patterns cover the entire continent. Hairy giants have even been sighted in Russia, but these have been attributed to a plan by Stalin's scientists to engineer a race of hybrid soldiers. Among today's researchers, one faction thinks Bigfoot’s existence can only be proven by hunting one down and killing it. The other believes it should be declared extant now and laws made against killing one. Christopher Noel, author of Impossible Visits: The Inside Story of Interactions with Sasquatch at Habituation Sites, is a friend and former instructor of mine. He’s on the second side, I’ll call it nonviolent acceptance, though for all I know, even he might like to capture one for evidentiary purposes. I hope not. As far as I can tell, considering the centuries of unproven sightings, despite all the tufts of non-human hair collected over the years, not to mention the plaster footprints, these beings are masters of subtlety who WON'T be captured entirely, try as we might, so who needs another law? I've never seen one myself and if I had I might want to do something to protect it, but my intuition says they're not in danger from our clumsy attempts to prove or legislate their existence. Even so, watching the footage of eager, armed Bigfoot researchers on YouTube after a close call with something unknown, sometimes I worry a little.
The more homogenized mass media becomes, the less reportage certain inconvenient facts receive, but despite the Fox channel’s best efforts, there are reports of elusive apelike creatures spotted all over the North American continent dating back centuries, at least as far as the early 1800s. Impossible Visits is a compilation of several attempts to habituate these—involving vocalization, wood knocking, and the exchange of talismans—including the author's own experience with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, providing a comfortable insider’s view of this uncommon perspective.
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