I saw Leo again. So now I’m pretty sure he wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
This time it was in the woods, rather than along the road. Bailey and I were tramping around in one of her favorite places to romp when I hear a voice shout out “Over here!”, or something like that. I was listening to a podcast and had one ear bud in. I never put both ear buds in just in case someone shouts “Over here!” Or in case a cougar snarls.
This time Leo was standing on the other side of a small gorge that has a little, rain-fed seasonal stream at its bottom. Leo is still out there searching. Only this time he didn’t mention any dimensional portals. No, this time he was out looking for the thing that made the loud, deep screaming noise the day before, the thing that left the large tracks. Yep, Leo is on the trail of Sasquatch.
Oh, he talked about other things, like being old friends with a guy named Halliburton. You know the name, you know the company. That guy. Apparently Leo has done a lot of construction work in his day and got to know Mr. Halliburton years and years ago. So that was … something.
I think I mentioned in a recent newsletter about finding a trail that was new to me, and in the finding, discovering a felled tree out in the middle of seemingly nowhere. Well, in talking to Leo I also learned the likely reason for that tree being cut down out in the middle of nowhere. The tree is a big leaf maple (I had mistakenly reported it as an alder). According to Leo, the wood is prized in the making of musical instruments. So it was likely a tree poacher looking for some fine-grained maple to sell to instrument makers. Which makes sense, I guess.
But back to Sasquatch. Apparently both Leo and his wife have separately encountered the mythical being. Though I suppose if they actually encountered one, it’s no longer mythical. I can tell you that Leo knows for a fact that it’s not mythical. Those things are ten feet tall and run kind of like a gorilla! Leo had his camera with him and was off to get some video. I’ll be sure to let you know how it turned out.
Bailey and I returned the next day. No Sasquatch, but this time we saw some strange markings on the forest floor, as if someone was dragging their foot for 10 or 12 feet and then stopped, making a little pile of debris from the dragging. Then walking normally for a few feet and then dragging their foot yet again for another 10 feet or so.
Over and over. Whoever, or whatever, it was made a track from about 100 feet off the road all the way to near the edge of the gorge, which is probably another 200 feet. So not very far at all. But then it stopped with no indication of what it could have been. But, like I said, no Sasquatch. The only thing we saw were a number of woodpecker holes in a cedar tree. Which admittedly is pretty cool to see. And less disconcerting than the cougar claw marks Leo told me he saw on a cedar tree at the bottom of the gorge.
