Butterflies to Bigfoot

Near the end of his new book,
'Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the
Dark Divide', naturalist Robert
Michael Pyle describes an eerie incident
that occurred one stormy
evening on a drive through the back
country east of Mt. St. Helens. Having
concluded his Bigfoot researchin
the area, Pyle was headed from Carson
to Olympia when he stopped at
Elk Pass to stretch. Hearing a
whistling in the darkness, Pyle whistled
back. Whatever was there whistled
in response, and they continued
to communicate in this way as the
sound moved to within 100 feet
of Pyle's car. Suddenly, something
struck the vehicle's roof, and Pyle put
pedal to metal and sped away When
he returned in the daylight, he found
a set of tracks too large to have been
made by an elk or bear.
While Pyle, who has a Ph.D. in
ecology from Yale University, will not
say these were the tracks of
Sasquatch (another name for Bigfoot),
he has no adequate explanation
for what he found. "It sounds
hokey," he said, "but to quote Dave
Barry, 'I am not making this up.' "
Pyle points out that we know so little
about the natural world that it seems
foolish to dismiss the notion of
Sasquatch merely because a specimen
does not exist.  Rather than aiming
for personal sightings or categorical
proof one way or the other, he
chooses instead to examine the possibility
of Bigfoot.


Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing
the Dark Divide. Robert Michael
Pyle. 1995. New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company. 327 pp.