a reply to:
RadioRobert
You really should try Alaska. It's where God finished up, after practicing everywhere else. Down along the panhandle, especially this time of year,
it's wet, and foggy, and just absolutely incredibly beautiful. The mountains come right down to the sea, in a million shades of green and gray. In
the Interior, especially north towards the Brookes Range--look east, and you're looking into miles and miles of miles and miles. It has a stark
beauty all it's own. Then there's the Chain, where I spent most of my time in Alaska, again, it's dangerous, it's lethal, it's beautiful...weather
can change a hundred times in a day. From howling Willawaws with 130-150 mph winds, to bright sunshine, almost as quickly as I typed this. One of
the reasons it can be so very dangerous. Then the slope...my lasting memory of the slope isn't the dark of the winter, but the god awful sunshine of
the summer. But, again, it's untamed wild, outside of the villages, and they're not so tamed most of the time.
Denali. Oh, where to start? It's where I had on of my scarier encounters with "something". But Denali itself...when lit with the ghost light of the
Aurora, you can almost understand the reverence the natives have for it. Great One, indeed. Or, when it's lit by the first light of the morning?
I'm not actually sure what made me think, or rather know, it was the kid. It never crossed my mind that it could have been otherwise...
As for bigfoot? Other, because it's not a dumb creature. Now my encounter was brief, a handful of seconds, maybe slightly more...though it seemed
longer. But my lasting impression was it was if not human, certainly not far off. Mystical? No. Alien? Not that either. But not dumb animal,
either.
I'm not sure if I related the story here on ATS or not, but my grandfather encountered Sasquatch twice, once at several hundred yards distance,
according to my Dad, who told me the story. ...and quite a bit closer some years later.
But here it is...dramatic pause...
His first encounter was just after he'd become county sheriff in Klickitat county in Washington St.--around 1928 or so, I'm not quite sure when he
became sheriff, my dad was still very young, so it would have been before the Great Depression got started.
Anyway, he's out back of beyond getting to know the lay of the land, so to speak, when he spotted someone (thing) crossing just below a crest of a
hill some two hundred to two hundred and fifty yards or so away. He stopped, and put his binoculars on it, and, well, surprise, surprise--and he
was--looking back at him was Sasquatch, or Skookum, as some of the First Nations call him here in the NW. Well.
A few years later, he and a posse (yes, that was still a thing in 1930's America), were out trying to round up a group of cattle or horse rustlers
(that too, was still a thing, and still carried hefty penalties, hence the posse.) in the northern part of Klickitat county...which is still rather
rough country--I've back packed up in there many times over the years. If I remember correctly, there were six, or seven, guys, including one native
american tracker from one of the local tribes. This group were all WW1 veterans, including the tracker. They'd been there, done that, and got the
twitches to prove it. They didn't scare easily. My granddad had been a doughboy, a Wyoming cowboy, and now a county sheriff, the others were by
Grandpa's account, just as interesting.
Any way, they'd camped for the night at the edge of the Gifford Pinchot national forest around Trout Lake, and since they were hunting men who didn't
really want to be caught, and might get a little stubborn about it, they'd set a watch. Well, sometime in the very early AM, the guide woke my
Grandpa, telling him Skookum is watching us. So, Granddad bails out of his sleeping bag with his rifle--his **ahem** borrowed Springfield 1903 from
his time in France--and looks off into the woods, there, about 50-75 feet away, so the story goes, was a pair of glowing red eyes reflecting the light
of their small campfire...
Now, granddad was going to draw down on it, but he looked at the tracker first, and got a negative sign, don't do it. Grandpa got the distinct
impression from the way he was looked at that shooting Skookum might just bring the others that were out there in the dark unseen, down on them. So
he refrained.
A few moments later...the eyes disappeared. Later, at first light, they looked around and found where he'd been standing, and the estimate was about
12 feet tall. That's a big ass Skookum, even by Skookum standards...
A few days later, they caught the rustlers.
You've got me started now, brother...
edit on 10/26/2018 by seagull because: (no reason given)