What an exciting weekend we had down by Waldport!
For the second year in a row, The resident Historian had the distinct pleasure of being invited to a conference of Bigfoot researchers, seekers, hunters – what ever the fuck you want to call ’em. Let’s just jump to the parlance of our time and say Bigfoot Geeks. In a camp out deep in the woods environment, about 90 of us gathered in the forest outside of Waldport, Oregon, and had a chance to share stories on the mythical primate, as well as enjoy presentations related to the beast. Cause Bigfoot Geeks dig the woods, man.
So what did we do? Well – we drank. A lot! We cooked good food! And we heard all the latest research that had been conducted that year regarding Sasquatch.
It is very interesting attending a conference where everyone sleeps in tents, there is no running water, just an outhouse for a shitter and the projector for the powerpoints is run off of a generator. It must certainly a weird experience for some folks, but I dunno… when talking about Bigfoot, it just kinda feels right, you know?
We got to hear some famous sounds of Bigfoot chatter recorded in the Sierras in the 1970s – AND as a bonus, a tangential 
tale of the “Giants of Peru.” Peter Byrne of legendary 1970’s Bigfoot fame told us of the time he obtained the Yeti finger from a Nepalese Monastery in the 1950’s. Different “versions” of mythical forest primates were presented (Wild Man, Woodsman, The Russian Almasty, Hoopa Man, Skunk Ape, Baboon Man), and an analysis was displayed as to where these disparate beasts matched up with the “true Sasquatch.” We got to see a presentation on “glyphs,” which are purported to be a form of cuneiform text that Bigfoots will leave to one another in the woods – a “proto writing” (although the presenter HATED that term). We also learned the proper way to collect samples so as to not have them contaminated for DNA analysis.
But perhaps MY favorite presentation was on an expedition that I was delighted to have been invited to last fall to Northern California. The purpose of this specific expedition was to research a Bigfoot that was captured, inadvertently, from a 6 second segment on a Blackberry video. We stayed in the woods for almost a week last fall, verifying height and speed and distance and perspective so on of this “captured” beast. The presentation went quite well, and the crowd was quite surprised at the analysis provided.
While Sasquatch is not a legend “owned” by Oregon, the beast is certainly well entrenched within our collective legacy. It was an honor to discus our crunchy, tree hugging cousin in the beautiful woods of our beautiful, beautiful state.
Check out some more pics from Bigfoot Camp 2013 on the Facebook Machine.
That right there is a glyph, dude…
AND if you haven’t heard them yet, please check out our TWO Kick Ass Oregon History podcasts on Bigfoots in Oregon – Episode 1 and Episode 2.
