news story / By Steven Streufert

Road to Bluff Creek

(Nov. 1, 2007) “Roger and Bob rode out that day / Their lives changed in every way/So did ours ’cause we got to see/A living Bigfoot, walking tall and free ,” sang Tom Yamarone, belting out the verses of one of his Bigfoot folk-historical ballads.

Yamarone’s lyrics rang true inside the Willow Creek VFW Hall a couple of weekends ago, where 50 or so members of the Sasquatch community gathered to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the fabled “Patterson-Gimlin film.” The film, shot by the “Roger and Bob” of Yamarone’s song, is the most solid Bigfoot evidence ever presented. (See “Bigfoot Trapped By Norcal Fanatic!” Oct. 18.)

Conference presenter Daniel Perez critiques the professional skeptics at Fortean Times magazine. Photo by Steven Streufert

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Believers from near and far made the pilgrimage on Oct. 20 — first to Willow Creek, and then out to the remote site where the film was shot, there to pay their respects to the historic event and to share the latest research.

A shimmer of possibility filled the VFW Hall. Bigfooting, it seems, is as much about the community of ’Squatchers as it is about the Giant Hairy Ape itself.Something had changed these folks who, despite otherwise ordinary lives, were ready to pursue to the ends of the Earth a creature most consider a phantasm. Curiosity and the spirit of rational inquiry were readily apparent, noted in thorough documentation covering the walls. Noting no sign of lunacy, it occurred to me that the crazy ones were the journalists sitting in their barren offices cranking out the same old dismissals.

Daniel Perez, authority on logistics of the making of the Patterson-Gimlin film, argued that the subject could not have been faked. That muscle mass moving with each huge stride, the height and inhuman proportions — could that have been produced with padding and fake fur? The strides through the film site of a 6’4” man reveal his tiny homo sapiens form beside a creature that could smash him with one stomp. (“If the suit doesn’t fit, he must exist.”)

No one has been able to replicate the film, even with a $75,000 BBC budget. Perez presented a 16mm Kodak Cine-100 home movie camera, the model that Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin used. I felt its awkward bulk and saw the creature on the projection screen through its tiny, dim viewfinder. How anything was captured by this camera with its tiny 16 mm cartridge is miracle enough.

Legendary Al Hodgson, for decades the operator of the general store, also spoke. He was a contact not only for the Patterson-Gimlin film but also the 1958 activity in the area, when tractor driver Jerry Crew brought giant footprint casts down from the Bluff Creek road construction zone and made front page news in the Times-Standard and papers globally. This was the birth of “Bigfoot” as a media phenomenon. Presenting the recent North Coast Journal with its cover’s tabloid parody, Hodgson said: “You may have seen this — don’t like it.” Chuckles and groans emerged. Bigfoot was not a joke to this crowd.

Hodgson presented tales told to him by locals, without even a hint of the tall tale in the telling from this 83-year-old church-going business and family man. Of one of his informants, Al said, “He is not lying — know him too well.” Hodgson saw sightings as ordinary. The Sasquatch is a consistently documented though elusive primate, the origin of old frontier tales and centuries-old Native cultural representations. Without seeking it out, people see it, hear its howls and vocalizations, find footprints or feel its wild, cunning eyes gazing from hillsides that could hide just about anything.

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