Bigfoot’s furry face can be found in everything from beef jerky ads to 1980s movies, but not one person has found conclusive proof of its existence.
University of Idaho English Department Instructor Tom Drake said “there’s no reason to believe” in Bigfoot.
“The concept that there could be an animal that exists that leaves no scat, that would live solitarily … that would not live someplace where you could actually find its cave — this is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” he said.
This hasn’t stopped efforts to understand the Bigfoot mythos, and the Internet is full of communication on the issue. One group, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, has set up an extensive online database of sightings and reports in Canada and the U.S., as well as tips for gathering evidence and collections of photos, recorded howls and eyewitness sketches.
Founded in 1995, the organization claims to be “the only scientific research organization exploring the bigfoot/sasquatch mystery,” and utilizes the skills of volunteer researchers representing various fields of science, journalism and specialized study. The group organizes expeditions across the country and has been featured in the Animal Planet television series “Finding Bigfoot.”
The BFRO maintains on its website that Bigfoot is probably a primate animal that lives in low-density population groups and has adapted a lifestyle of stealth. The website includes a statement that “for more than 400 years people have reported seeing large, hair-covered, man-like animals in the wilderness areas of North America.”
UI freshman Andrea Floyd said she spent time as a child hiking the redwood forests of northern California, where stories suggest the creature lived among the Sequoia Indians. Sasquatch is a Native American word for the creature from the Halkomelem language used within British Columbia and Washington.
“Thinking about the fact that he might be out there, it was very interesting for me because I’d come up with all these really weird scenarios in my head of meeting him,” she said. “I was always very excited with the prospect of meeting Bigfoot and getting evidence that he was out there.”
Floyd said she likes to listen to both sides of the Sasquatch issue and admits that she likes to entertain the thought of its existence because of the culture in which she was raised. She disapproves of those who jump too soon to skepticism and believes her open-mindedness about Bigfoot and other mysteries improves her life’s outlook.
“It’s sort of like saying that anything could happen, anything’s possible,” Floyd said.
“We need a way to explain life other than scientific facts because it’s how human culture started — we started with myth, and then we grew into science.”
Drake teaches English courses in Western literature and persuasive writing. He said humans have always created myths to make sense of the world, and the separation of “myth” and “factual information” only began a few hundred years ago with Isaac Newton.
Drake said he considers empirical scientific analysis and observation important foundations of a healthy worldview. Despite its uses in courts of law, politics and fields of research, he said science has its limitations in quality of life.
“(That) way of thinking won’t help you deal with death, it won’t help you within your marriage, it won’t help you be a father,” he said. “You need to have this other element … that allows you to grapple with and make your peace with the parts of life that science doesn’t help.”
Despite his appreciation of story and myth, Drake said the best theory is based on a “smoking gun,” something that has hard evidence. He said there’s no place in the U.S. that hasn’t been explored and scientifically catalogued, unlike remote parts of the Congo or the depths of the ocean. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable, he said, because people “tend to fill in the blanks in their knowledge with their imaginations.”
“So when people see a raccoon in the woods … that’s a statement about (how) we know that raccoons exist,” he said. “We know the raccoon’s here because other people have seen raccoons, we’ve killed them, here is a raccoon. No one’s ever produced a Bigfoot. It would be the only animal that cannot be physically produced.”
Floyd said she prefers to envision Bigfoot as an intelligent being that chooses to reveal itself at the right moments.
“My deaf grandpa likes to say that he saw Bigfoot once, and I’d always ask him (for) details,” Floyd said. “He never really gave them to me. I think he was drunk at the time he saw (it).”
Matt Maw can be reached at [email protected]