In the Spirit of Rugaru: Bigfoot As Prophetic Representative of the Earth; Texas Bigfoot Conference, Willow Creek Werewolf Comic

As I was visited recently by Craig Woolheater of the TEXAS BIGFOOT RESEARCH CONSERVANCY, and at the upcoming TEXAS BIGFOOT CONFERENCE, Peter Matthiessen is finally coming out in full public view with the Bigfoot beliefs I always suspected he held, I got to thinking about a book I read over a decade ago, and a certain mysterious creature in it: RUGARU!

[NOTE: The 2009 Texas Bigfoot Conference will be held in Tyler, Texas, September 26, 2009, 8:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M."]

Back in the mid-to-late 90s I was on a jag of reading "bad history" (the horror, the horror!), absorbing all I could of the nightmare of humanity's past (trying to awaken). During this time I read Peter Matthiessen's IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE, right after "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and "American Holocaust." As I read along I began to sense something strange about this book. Mostly it is a legalistic recounting of the horrid injustices done to the Lakota, the American Indian Movement, and in particular, Leonard Peltier. But it is also an attempt to tell the history of the People through the aspects of the culture still living and viable in the modern world. A recurrent theme, popping up over and over again, to the point I had to stop, go to the index, and re-read the segments where RUGARU, or THE BIG HAIRY MAN, was discussed. What was Bigfoot-- as the author and his interviewees clearly meant to say this spirit/creature was--doing in this book? Rugaru, just as the Bigfoot we know more familiarly, creeps on the margins, or at the heart of things in this book, as a sub-text that emerges as the main message: Humanity is out of touch, out of balance, crimes against nature and people must be righted, and our ways of life changed to their proper states.

See, Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, or Rugaru, or...) isn't some phenomenon originating in 1950s or 1960s popular culture; it has been here for thousands of years, most likely brought over by (or preceding) the Native Americans as they crossed from Asia during the prior Ice Ages. Personally, I learned about Bigfoot in the usual way of my generation, through Leonard Nimoy on "In Search Of," and then through John Green's books in the paranormal section of the public library. I was obsessed, at around the age of nine or ten, with such things, be they ghosts, ESP, cryptid creatures or monsters, UFOs or demons--I was down with it. But in the years interceding my mental use of Bigfoot became increasingly of a humorous nature. It was just simply funny, seen on the cover of The Weekly World News. Bigfoot had the air of something rebellious in it, too: it lived outside of human parameters and society, stank to high heaven, and loved to mess with logging equipment. Bigfoot was the first Earth First-er! Sasquatch was a Rebel. Bigfoot began to appeal to my associates in the ARMCHAIR ANARCHISTS SOCIETY, to the degree that we formed a splinter group, THE CHURCH OF BIGFOOT SCIENTIST. Even as we laughed, joked and chanted "Rugaru, Rugaru!!!" around the campfires, something was slowly changing in me, I was beginning to suspect there WERE perhaps eyes looking back at me from the dark forests, wondering about our absurd behavior and myriad empty beer bottles. And then we encountered something brown and tall, moving through heavy forest brush several miles in to old logging company land way back in the hills above Blue Lake, CA. We only really saw it's head moving quickly through the branches, its body obscured. It could, perhaps, have been an elk; but I've never seen the dogs we had with us respond this way to anything, and they were used to bear, deer, cougars and foxes. They positively freaked out. The thing quickly disappeared down into the deep thickets, but we could hear its treads retreating. There was something strange about it, an unexplainable feeling in the experience.

I referred back to Matthiessen's book again, haunted by his evocation of the BIG MAN, the spirit of the woods, of earth's justice, of something beyond current culture and the hegemonic dominance of cheezoid and crass corporate consumerism. As I began reading the books about Sasquatch, eventually consuming about 50 of them, the myth and legend began to become a plausible reality. No, it wasn't just a joke: this thing has been leaving tracks, making appearances, and maybe abducting human females and children, for centuries. The reported characteristics are so consistent that eventually one has to take out Occam's Razor and admit it: the simplest explanation, simpler by far than "myth" and "hoaxing," is that THERE IS SUCH A CREATURE, and it is alive and well out there in the world beyond our imaginations as well as within them.

Here are quotes from the book, mysteriously hidden within the massive 686 page narrative of historical oppression and heroic survival:

"My travels with Indians began some years ago with the discovery that most traditional communities in North America know of a messenger who appears in evil times as a warning from the Creator that man's disrespect for His sacred instructions has upset the harmony and balance of existence; some say that the messenger comes in sign of a great destroying fire that will purify the world of the disruption and pollution of earth, air, water, and all living things. He has strong spirit powers and sometimes takes the form of a huge hairy man; in recent years this primordial being has appeared near Indian communities from the northern Plains states to far northern Alberta and throughout the Pacific Northwest." (pg. xxiii)

"Along the way I learned a little of the Indians' identity with land and life (very different from our 'environmental' understanding) and shared a little of their long sadness about the theft and ruin of ancestral lands--one reason, they felt, why That-One-You-Are-Speaking-About had reappeared." (pg. xxiii)

"'There's a lot going on up in that country now,' said Archie Fire, referring not only to the threat to the Great Plains from widespread mining but to recent appearances of the big hairy man at Little Eagle, on the Standing Rock Reservation, who came in sign, some people said, of those days at the world's end 'when the moon will turn red and the sun will turn blue' and the Lakota people will resume their place at the center of existence." (pg. xxvi)

"Turtle Mountain was among the many Indian communities that had been visited in recent years by the "rugaru," as the Ojibwa call the hairy man who appears in symptom of danger or psychic disruption in the community. Mary's son Richard talked a little about the appearance of these beings in recent years to Lakota people at Little Eagle, South Dakota. 'There were just too many sightings down there to ignore. I mean, a lot of people saw it. Around here, we didn't have very many reports; most of them were right here where we live now.' He waved his hand to indicate the woods outside, where I camped that night along the lake edge." (pg. xxvii)

"A few weeks before, the big, hairy man had appeared in Little Eagle for the third straight year, and more than forty people had seen him. 'I think that the Big Man is kind of the husband of Unk-ksa, the Earth, who is wise in the way of anything with its own natural wisdom. Sometimes we say that this One is kind of a big reptile from the ancient times, who can take a big, hairy form; I also think he can change into a coyote. He is very powerful. Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, they did not honor him, and they are already gone." (xxix-xxx)

"Her family paid no attention. 'They're all Christians up there now,' Lame Deer had told me. And Joe Flying By, asked how the old people of Little Eagle accounted for the Big Man, had said shortly, 'There are no more old people.'" (pg. xxxi)

"Sidney Keith said that the Big Man seen at Little Eagle might be Unk-cegi, which means literally 'Earth Brown' or "Brown Shit'--the filth of Creation. Unk-cegi lived long, long ago, in the time of the great animals, but he had been covered up in the Great Flood, with all the other giants. 'He was down there too deep to be saved by Noah,' Sidney Keith observed dryly. But all the mining, all these underground explosions of the white man's bombs, had made fissures in the earth and released not Unk-cegi but his spirit. 'His bones are still down there. That's why Indians get so upset when burial grounds are disturbed, when the whole burying ceremony is interfered with; it isn't just a matter of disrespect. Disturbing the burial grounds the way the white man does releases those spirits. Unk-cegi was here when Indian man first came here. He seeks out Indian communities because he knew Indians in the Old Days, and he sought out Little Eagle because that is the worst place for drinking in Standing Rock, and maybe Cheyenne River, too. We drink too much in Eagle Butte, but not like that; even their old people are all drunk over there. Unk-cegi appeared to kids who smoke grass, and drunks and hotheads... nice people, some of 'em, but they do bad things. He won't appear to the good people; that's why Joe Flying By didn't see him. And he won't appear at the sun dance--that's a good circle.'" (pg. xxxiii)

"'Maybe it's a good thing that Nature would come along and change everything, clear all that away, and start again.' Of the Big Man, Joe Eagle Elk said, 'It seems maybe he has got a good heart. He has never hurt nobody. A lot of people over there at Little Eagle, they been shooting at him instead of trying to exchange words and ask why he is coming around. Maybe he is trying to tell us what he wants and where he comes from; maybe he is bringing news for us, a warning.'"

"'This nation--I can't say my nation, because they stole it away from me. ...They cheated and lied, and broke every treaty, even the sacred treaty that protected the Black Hills.' The medicine man subsided suddenly and became silent, composing himself. 'We've come to an age when we should know better than we are doing,' Pete Catches resumed softly, in a silence that followed some meditations on the Big Man, who was trying to save mankind, he said, from the great cataclysm the Indian people knew was coming. 'We must now try to understand what is wrong with us, why we have to tamper with and change the forests and the land. We have done this too long--not us, but the white man. Let's not walk on the moon, then fail to understand what this Creation is all about. This is life, this is beautiful, everything is the way it should be. (pg. xxxviii)

"'Maybe around three or four o'clock, ...not long before the sun, we heard something very big walking in the creek. It wasn't any animal, either, and it wasn't somebody tossing in big rocks; it was plunk-plunk-plunk, like that, big steady steps. Zimmerman was so scared he just ran off, he wanted to wake up Joe, because him and Joe was living in one tent. Norman Brown said it was the Big Man, and that his people over in Arizona knew all about it, but we were all too scared to go down there and look.' In the evening of that day, huge dark thunderheads gathered over the Black Hills, followed by wild angry winds and lashing rain that caused property damage all over the western part of South Dakota." (pg. 149)

"I told Sam about the footsteps in the creek heard on the night before the shoot-out by Jean Bordeaux and Jimmy Zimmerman and Norman Brown, and he nodded, saying, 'That was a sign, a warning.' 'There is your Big Man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day,' Pete Catches had told me two years earlier, here on Pine Ridge. "He is both spirit AND real being'--he had slapped the iron of his cot for emphasis--'but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as if the trees weren't there. At Little Eagle, all those people came, and they went out with rifles and long scopes, and they couldn't see him, but all those other people at the bonfire, he came up close to them, they smelled him, heard him breathing; and when they tried to get too close, he went away. He didn't harm no one; I know him as my brother. I wanted to live over there at Little Eagle, go out by myself where he was last seen, and come in contact with him. I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me. It doesn't matter what you call him; he has many names. I call him Brother, Ci-e, and that's what the Old People would call him, too. We know that he was here with us for a long time; and we are fortunate to see him in our generation. We may not see him again for many, many generations. But he will come back, just when the next Ice Age comes into being.'" (pg. 559)

So, we should all consider our humanity, humaneness, and the value to be found in the life that surrounds us. That life IS us. Rugaru seems to be here, if not perhaps to warn us in our stupidity, then at least to remind us in our ignorance of the real, wild and largely unknown world that we are a part of, despite many centuries of deluded actions and insane culture.

If you want to study this subject further, here is a great article we found in researching this blog entry: "Attitudes Toward Bigfoot in Many Native American Cultures," by Gayle Highpine.

"Our people don't call themselves Sioux or Dakota. That's white man talk. We call ourselves Ikce Wicasa--THE NATURAL HUMANS, THE FREE, THE WILD, COMMON PEOPLE. I am pleased to be called that." --John Fire Lame Deer

"Rugaru," as a neologism or pidgin term is certainly derived from Native interactions with French frontiersmen and traders. The root terms would be "loup" and "garou," meaning basically "wolf-man," "werewolf," or a lycanthropic shapeshifter. It would seem that this was the French folks' interpretation of the Native's "big hairy man."

Recently a comic book/graphic novel was produced by Zenoscope Entertainment, called (of all things) WILLOW CREEK, and set here in our area. It involves Bigfoot and a werewolf beast being mixed up between Native and modern culture. A whole group of Bigfoot hunters is slaughtered. The blood and gore flies. Mysteries are revealed. Sadly, production on this cool horror project was suspended indefinitely when the artist contracted spinal cancer. Let's hope he recovers and the series continues. The two back issues are still available at Bigfoot Books, however, while supplies last.

Leonard Peltier was recently denied parole, AGAIN. It would seem he is the scapegoat the FBI and government require. Matthiessen's book proves pretty damn conclusively that he is NOT guilty of shooting those federal agents. To take action start with the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

Coming soon to this blog:

"SEVEN-YEAR-OLD GOES SQUATCHING"!

Dad and daughter will be going up to Bluff Creek, Fish Lake, Onion Lake and Onion Mountain Road this weekend. Bigfoot will be found!!!

PS--the more I work and live out here the more I hear, from locals and people from the various Native American tribes, about Bigfoot as a shape-shifter, a spiritual, interdimensional being. Before, I'd thought this stuff was kind of nutso. But now I am starting to wonder.... Watch the right side of the blog for a new POLL TOPIC on this matter.

The Track Record Update: Ray Crowe--Who Is This Guy, Anyway? The Bigfoot Bar and Grill; Sexsquatchploitation and Scatology in Human Culture; Nights with Sasquatch

So, who IS this Ray Crowe, anyway? In his time in the bigfooting field he was not just a bigfoot hunter, but an editor, event organizer, field investigator, and generalized paranormalist and Fortean. He co-founded The Western Bigfoot Society, but he was also interested in all things that go bump in the night or hoot and howl in the forest. Though Ray was a serious researcher of the Sasquatch, he also found time for literary pursuits, and as well for the pursuit of things that were just downright strange. It should be noted that Ray did not necessarily agree with every theory or sighting he published. He kept an open mind, but always "kept his skepticals on."

In the Index of the newly released THE TRACK RECORD on CD we find entries on Rip Van Winkle, Spam, Sea Monkies, Plesiosaurus, UFOs, Mothman, Men in Black (MIBs), Mars, Loch Ness, Little People, Adolf Hitler, Goat Suckers, Fate Magazine, Cyclops, Bob Dylan, Art Bell, Crop Circles, Crystal Skulls, Bubonic Plague, Alien Implants, and of course Bigfoot Tampons, Bigfoot Testicles, Bigfoot Telepathy, Bigfoot Sexual Abuse of Other Animals, Bigfoot Orbs, Multi-Dimensional Bigfoot, Bigfoot Marijuana Eating, the Bigfoot Army, Bigfoot Lost Time, Bigfoot Electricity Stops Functioning, Bigfoot Conspiracy, and let's not forget... Bigfoot Attracted Sexually to Humans. Far out stuff! But there is a lot of down-to-earth information in there, too... like Bigfoot Scat, and.... OK, I'll stop.

Besides The Track Record (see our Previous Post: now released on CD!), his apparently humorously-intended fictional work, "The Bigfoot Bar and Grill," tells the tale of bigfoot rape of a human female, the quest for revenge, along with a lot of strangely scatological humor at the expense of some redneck country folk bigfoot hunter characters. See the two scanned sample sections below, click to ENLARGE.

Image above, the book now in possession of Bigfoot Books, with sunfaded cover. To left, from a t-shirt of the Western Bigfoot Society. This image and others following of Ray Crowe had to be lifted from the fine video, SASQUATCH ODYSSEY. See our previous POST.

 [WARNING!: Some, or most, or all of the quotations that follow are of a GROTESQUE, SICKLY HUMOROUS and sometimes HORRIFIC nature, not to be read by young folks and the faint of heart, or adults who might just happen to have GOOD TASTE. They involve vast quantities of bodily excreta, as well as scenes of involuntary interspecies miscegenation. They are presented here for purposes of literary and historical analysis only!!! Note: Poooz, the character found below, is a member of a clan of Sasquatches.]

Sample quotes from The Bigfoot Bar and Grill:

"In some places that the Bigfoot visited frequently, a reek would fill the air, the stench so bad that humans almost needed a gas-mask to enter the area with... if you could find anybody foolish enough to enter the gut-wrenching stench anyway. Coming around the huge tree, Poooz almost ran into the female 'skin.' It startled him so much that he screamed in fear, 'Aiiiieeee!' dropping a handful of bear grass, turning in his fear to escape. Goldie surprised and terrified, screamed also, scared as much by the beast as its own surprised scream of terror. She had been bent over a log, doing her morning thing, and had just finished wiping; Levi's on the ground next to her, panties around her ankles, paperback romance novel in hand, when the monster appeared. She was so startled and frightened that she never screamed so loud in her life, running stocking-foot towards her tent, she left her pants, boots, and toilet paper on the ground. Realizing that the startling, screaming apparition was 'only' a skin, Poooz reacted in an instant... rushed over and grabbed the screaming and fleeing skin by her hair and an arm, kicked her feet apart, and jammed his organ into her from the rear end. She coughed and choked, then continued screaming, and wiggling to get away. The motion excited him all the more, and he hugged her closer, sinking even deeper into her. Goldie fought and scratched and bit and kicked, but soon found the harder she fought, the more the monster seemed to squirt into her. Going limp she slumped to the ground to play opossum, and she felt a final deep thrust, and a swelling between her legs... bigger and bigger. Poooz felt himself swelling, and knew that he was through. Later on, his engorged penis, almost the size of a small baseball... nature's way of insuring that an unappreciative female couldn't escape before the sperm impregnated her, would shrink again, and he could let the skin go free, of no further interest to him. Goldie felt the swelling and felt helpless. Starting to panic again at this evil smelling monster that was raping her, she again started struggling... harder than ever... and screaming louder... louder than ever." Hearing the ruckus and commotion, several of the clan wandered over to see what was happening. They quickly lost interest when they saw that Poooz was only relieving himself with a skin, and wandered off again, hunting for something more entertaining, or something to nibble. Poooz felt the skin start to try and wiggle free again. Knowing she was firmly impaled, he released her, and she fought even harder, and he found himself getting excited again. Grabbing her again, and pulling her thrashing body tightly against his swollen member, he could feel himself squirting again and again. He released her to thrash some more, which she did, and he squirted again. Never before had he squirted so much at one time. Exhausted, Goldie fell into a near faint, though still aware of the tremendous pressure in her crotch, she knew there was nothing she could do about it, but kept screaming anyway. Ramming his thing in harder and harder again and again, trying to make himself squirt even more, Poooz eventually tired after the skin fainted and quit moving. Forty-five minutes later he finally felt himself shrinking, and let Goldie tumble to the ground. Thinking nothing more of the skin, Poooz wandered off in search of the clan, completely satisfied. Tonight he wouldn't have to sing."

And then, later...

"Before Mary could hush him Joe burst out with, "a Bigfoot just raped Goldie." "No shit! So what's everybody waitin' for then... let's go kill the son-of-a-bitch," shouted Tom, crushing his empty Coors can, and pitching it at a cardboard cutout picture of a Bigfoot standing in the corner."

And there is this fine description, from a later page:

"There was another terrifying, hair-raising scream.... There was a twelve foot monster, screaming to high heaven, running at them from 100 feet away. Calvin stood, his mouth gaping. Steve and Jeff just sat there, cups in hand, staring unbelievingly. Hank reach for his rifle, but stumbled and fell over. Tom was more practical in his instant reaction. He turned and ran, brown blobs coming out his pants cuffs, hair looking like it had turned permanently white. Jeff turned to see that the commotion was, soup dripping from his chin when he turned too fast.

The monster leaped over the group, an Olympic jump of 25 feet, and chased after Tom, screaming in the most spine-tingling shriek anybody had ever heard. Mary calmly picked up her rifle before anybody else could react to the surprise attack, let the safety off, took and held half a breath, centered the sight on Poooz's back, and calmly pumped three rounds off. There were three puffs of dust and blood, all in about the space a saucer would cover, right in the center of the animals back. Poooz staggered, veered away from the frantically running and stumbling and pissing and shitting and crying Tom, and disappeared in the brush to the left. Mary said in a controlled voice, "he's hit bad... lets go before he gets away." Where the monster had been shot there was a large spatter of blood on the ground, and bits of lung tissue. Mary started off on the trail, Hank, Steve, and Jeff close behind. Calvin stopped for more samples. Tom was still helpless on the ground, rolling and groaning in his own shit. Noticing he was being left behind though, he crawled briefly towards the rapidly retreating group, then stumbled to his feet and followed, staggering along, his boots squishing from his own excreta and piss."

GHASTLY! TORRID! HORRID! Ray, what were you thinking? Maybe these were written with the intent of descriptive vérité, based upon encounters and sighting reports? We may never know... and do we WANT to?

(published June 1991, Western Bigfoot Society)

Click Text Images to Enlarge! Other text image: the Western Bigfoot Society info. sheet found in Bigfoot Bar and Grill.

Throughout the publication run of his newsletter Ray Crowe fielded information and letters from the infamous hoaxer and possible nutjob Bigfoot "contactee," Ray Wallace. He once said, ""Ray's contribution was study into the actual behavior of Bigfoot, what it eats, how it acts." David Paulides has said he may publish some of these letters, now in the possession of NABS. That should be very... interesting, indeed!

A very interesting article on Bigfoot and bigfooting at the time, the late 1990s or so, was written by Robert Sullivan and published in OPEN SPACES QUARTERLY, Volume One, Number Three. Read it HERE. There are some interesting bits about Ray Crowe and his Bigfoot group, excerpts following.... We quote:

"In many ways, the Western Bigfoot Society is typical of the Northwest's numerous grass-roots Bigfoot organizations. It counts about forty people as members and meets on the last Thursday of every month in the basement of Ray Crowe's store, Ray's Used Books, just outside Portland, Oregon. Ray has decorated the meeting room with a mixture of large footprint casts, oddly twisted willow branches, a 21.6 cm. strand of cinnamon-colored hair, maps of nearby wilderness areas, with pins marking recent Bigfoot sightings, and tabloid headlines that the group finds humorous ( "Beautiful Women Help to Lure Bigfoot," reads one. "Sasquatch Likes to Study the Ladies."). Lately, Ray has taken to putting up photos from the group's occasional field trips, like the one to the nearby Primate Research Center, in Beaverton, Oregon, or the one to the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, in Rainier, Oregon, where Ray thinks the buzz of the power lines may act as a lure.

In the past, speakers at the meetings have included a dog trainer, who addressed Bigfoot's fear of dogs (a phenomenon often mentioned at Ray's meetings); a member of a local search-and-rescue team, who said that the media had neglected to mention that a three-year-old boy whom he rescued in the summer of 1989 from the forests around Mount Hood had credited a "large hairy man" for keeping him company during the long night; and a former paramilitary officer with the National Security Agency, who, on a top-secret mission somewhere in the rainforests of Mato Grosso, Brazil, photographed what he now thinks must have been a Sasquatch, only to have the film confiscated by higher-ups. On one occasion Ray even invited a U.F.O. expert who is a vocal proponent of the theory that Sasquatches have come from another world--a postulate that the W.B.S. as a group opposes. "They may be full of poop," Ray said, "but I figure I might as well let them have their say."

Like most part-time Bigfoot investigators, Ray, who is now fifty-five, got into Bigfoot hunting by accident; he was doing research for a novel that included a Sasquatch rape scene and then decided to research the Sasquatch beyond the scope of the book. Shortly afterward, in 1991, he founded the W.B.S., and then began The Track Record, a monthly newsletter containing Bigfoot gossip, inspirational quotes, and the latest sighting information people have related to Ray. Once in a while, Ray publishes letters, like the one that Erik Beckjord, director of the U.F.O. and Bigfoot Museum, in Malibu, California, sent him, which complimented the W.B.O.'s work, or the letter that Ray himself sent to the United States Forest Service, citing the Freedom of Information Act and demanding to see the Mount Hood National Forest rangers' Bigfoot log book, if it exists. (Ray thinks the rangers may keep a log of Bigfoot sightings.) A few years ago, on a spring evening, Ray had his first Sasquatch "experience," as he calls it, which began when he accidentally scared an elk away from his camp, at the end of an old logging road. "I was getting ready for dinner and while I'm standing there I hear what sounded like these two giant birds arguing," he told me. "I say arguing, but they were chattering, really. And, anyway, I just assume that they were two Bigfoot, just arguing with each other-p.o'd at me for losing their elk for dinner."

For historical flavor, here is the SCHEDULE OF EVENTS from the year 2000 BIGFOOT DAZE celebration. See how much FUN they had back then!!!
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Friday Evening, August 25th:
Many people will gather to get camp sites for tents or RV?s ($5.00 night), some staying at nearby motels. We visit into the night. No fires though, fire marshal wont let us have them.

Saturday Morning, August 26th:

10AM - 12 Noon - trip to Stevenson?s Columbia River Interpretive Center Museum

(fee...group rate though). See geology and history of area and a history film clip that has Bigfoot included as local historical subject.

Following the museum, a short trip up Rock Creek in Stevenson to see the petrified forest....pick up some pieces of a fossil tree to take home.

Break for lunch - Browse for sale memorabilia tables.

Saturday Afternoon 2PM - Listen to Speakers at Bigfoot Campground. Several possible have been invited (WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A SPEAKER?), but confirmation is slow. Thom Powell will talk about the Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO).

5 PM - Break for dinner.
7:30 PM - Cascade Trio Bigfoot Stomp Dance Contest.

Sunday Morning, August 27th:
10AM - Magician performs magic show for children along with bible school. Children's drawing of Bigfoot contest, visit, browse memorabilia tables. Rob Butler will have a family of life-size Bigfoot plywood cutouts to view, etc..

11AM - Larry Lund will demonstrate how to make plaster track impressions.

11:30 AM - Retired Fish and Wildlife Expert Jim Hewkin (not confirmed yet) will display a rare collection of seven plaster tracks made by a single creature from near Colton, OR, 1968. Many other tracks and hand prints of Bigfoot will be displayed also.

12 Noon - Sally Newcomer will have a Bigfoot Family in costumes. How they live, twist trees, stack stones, wood-on-wood. Her costumes were a hit last year as ladies got married to Bigfoot.?

12 Noon - Bigfoot Chili Cook-Off...prize to best judged chili entry.
12 Noon - (unassigned speaker...invited) will have a barefoot person walk across a sandbox and explain the physics of tracks...lift off, pressure ridges, and such.
Contest...prize to entry with the biggest foot (Sally has measuring board).
1PM - Bigfoot Potlatch Lunch (Pot-Luck)...Bigfoot burgers by camp hosts Harry and Donna Schumacher, Abominable Potato Salad and Yeti Spaghetti by Theata Crowe, Ray will bring a couple of watermelons...others, please bring some food items to share for the lunch. Thanks!

2 PM - Contest Bigfoot Yells/Screams...prize to best noise, judged and taped, prizes.

2:30 PM - Contest best homemade Bigfoot Costume prize.
3:00 PM - Bigfoot race...teams with giant feet strapped to feet will compete for various prizes.
5:00 PM - End of Bigfoot Daze.
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Ray Crowe images above: Ray on expedition; Ray at Mt. Saint Helens, looking for volcanically preserved Bigfoot remains cooked in solidified ash; Ray caving, exploring the possibility that Sasquatches live in old lava tubes; Ray speaking at Bigfoot Daze, WA, circa 1998.

The odd Bigfoot-human encounters depicted in Ray Crowe's fiction were part of the inspiration for the brilliantly bad film, Ape Canyon, by ex-Humboldter Jon Olsen. In fact, we obtained our Bigfoot Books copy from the filmmaker himself. Also influential for Olsen was The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats. Excerpts from the book HERE. See our brief Previous Post on this matter.

Let's not forget that Dave Paulides, in The Hoopa Project, has put forth the proposition that there has been genetic co-mingling between human and bigfoot, and not just in some ancient time, but fairly recently according to certain Native American accounts.

And now more, along the same lines, so long as we are talking about it and have surely offended nearly every reader at this point....

NOW READING: NIGHTS WITH SASQUATCH, a truly abominable, supposedly "true" tale, "An Explosive Ordeal of Rape and Revenge Beyond Any Woman's Experience," as the cover reads. This book is, as Joshua Blu Buhs (who sold us the book) says, is "truly skeevy." From the inside endpage, ""Does Sasquatch exist? The terrifying truth behind the ancient legend. A team of young scientists sets out to explore the Northwest Mountains. Both John Cotter and Judith Frankle were trained level-headed observers with liberated views on life and love. Until they confronted Sasquatch--a half-human monster who claimed Judith as his captive mate. This is the explosive novel of a woman forced to endure barbaric, sexual lusts beyond any human experience. And a man driven by revenge... The Sensational Shock-A-Page Novel." And, from the back cover, "Judith Frankle was a perfect specimen of the modern female, able to handle sophisticated lab data and lecherous young men with equal ease. She loved the wild freedom of roaming the mountains with her man, sharing the rugged pleasures of nature. But no woman, or man, could control the primitive terror that stalked her. A half-human beast whose brutal lusts stripped every vestige of civilization from her soul. Lusts that transformed Judith Frankle into a shameless savage desperately battling to survive her shocking... Nights with Sasquatch." In a Publisher's Note, in a desperate attempt to add  faux credibility to this otherwise base and horribly bad sexsquatchploitation: "For a complete technical report of the encounter described in this article the reader is referred to Dr John Cotter's "Pleistocene Man-Ape Link Survives in Canadian Wilderness," Journal of Mammology Volume MXIV June, 1976. Also a forthcoming treatise by Judith Frankle Cotter, PhD., in the distinguished British Journal, New Scientist: "Existence of Mythological Primate Confirmed." The following account is the first publication on the subject for General Readers."

EGADS! Take this one with a grain of salt, or at least some humor, if you can.

(Berkley Medallion Books, New York, 1977.)

It would seem that Bigfoot-Sasquatch bears, as a cultural motif, all that humans see as low and unbearable in themselves. It is a little unfair to place all this nastiness on the poor forest-dwelling hominoids. Perhaps it is we who are low and beastly, and they who are good, free and Noble? Bigfoot is like a scapegoat. We humans are the ones ruled by or at least deeply influenced by "base" impulses. Wild creatures cannot be said to be base; but we are conscious of our motivations, and have ideas and perversions surrounding them. BF just shits in the woods and moves on; he/she does not get a Freudian complex about it. We at once project outwardly and thereby deny deep and hidden truths about ourselves, all while using Sasquatch secretly as a means of self-knowledge. Or something like that. We are able to indirectly admit how odd and ape-like we are through the Bigfoot proxy. The real Bigfoot surely just laughs, and moves deeper into the woods. We'd write more of this now, but it would give away too much of our current back-of-the-mind book writing project.

ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

"In that article human friend Steve read to me, when I come steal beer from him back porch, Peter Byrne, human guy who look for me for many years and never see me say (me use cut-and-paste here), 'There are a number of rivalries in the Bigfoot field. Their principal basis is of course the belief that at the end of the Bigfoot rainbow there lies a pot of gold. ...[h]ad they over the years projected a fraction of the time and money that they spend vilifying each other on Bigfoot research [they] would surely have solved the mystery by now.' Me also hear that Professor Krantz say, 'You have to watch out, because there's a lot of backstabbing.' Once me thinking of contact human, give up old game of hiding in trees, but then me hear them talk around campfire (me hear everything, you no hear me) about other human bigfoot hunter dudes. Me hear bad words, like 'liar, fake, fraud, not a real bigfoot hunter, non-believer, @#$%ing cult, boy scout type, city boy, effeminate, gay, nerd, internet geek, guano fanatical cult freak violence threatening footer geek loser thug'---stuff like that, mean, bad words. Me quote real human word me really hear. Me feel anger! Me want smash little human heads. Give ass whoopin'! Me decide never talk with human. They probably say me smell real bad, too, but me I like the smell of me. Me think human stink like bad milk and stinky fake flowery soap smell. Me say human get them shit together and maybe then me come and hang out at Bluff Creek Louse Camp. I talk about that poopy and sexy stuff I just see above in me next Bigfoot Speak.Watch out suckah hu-man!"

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, we tried to stop A.G.F. ranting like that, but he demands the truth or justice or something like that come out. Personally, I've found the BF community to be quite convivial and familial, one where one can make instant friends across vast distances. The BF world is full of smart, friendly, independent, fun-loving folks; quite the opposite, I've found, of the redneck stereotype. But like many (most?) families, there are dysfunctionalities which arise. Folks, these need to end. Keep your eyes on the prize! Keep the following in mind....

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"The gift of collaboration is greater than the gift of competition."

--Tracy Morgan, comedian, heard on NPR, "Fresh Air," 2009
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Read the interesting Sasquatch Odyssey film diary here: http://www.sasquatchodyssey.com/diary.html. Ray Crowe and the "Four Horsemen of Bigfooting" are all in there. If you don't have this documentary, get it now. It is very funny, but also documents the early generation of Bigfooters before that era ended and internet-influenced Bigfootology began.

We're just now starting the Daniel Perez interview process. Give us at least a week until it appears here!
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Also, Coming Soon: "The Not-so Good, the Truly Bad, and the Hideously Ugly": three awful Bigfoot/Sasquatch movies viewed recently, and somewhat reluctantly.