Camp Monsters - Sasquatch - Part Two

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Our third full season of Camp Monsters will start in September, thanks to our sponsors at YETI. In the meantime, we figured we'd give you a handful of stories to tide you over. And while you think you might know everything there is to know about Sasquatch, this is a personal account. A story that'll have you crawling under the covers questioning whether or not you really believe in monsters.Season sponsor: YETIArtwork by: Tyler Grobowsky, @g_r_o_b_o

This is an REI Co-op Studios production. You'll be safe, if only you can make it to the campfire. There it is, up ahead through the trees. We're waiting for you, but... Will you make it? This is the Camp Monsters Podcast. Our third full season will begin in September, thanks to REI and our sponsors at Yeti. But once a month, between now and then, we thought we'd tell a story that we've been saving since before our very first season. A story about Bigfoot. Sasquatch. A story we've been saving because it's too long to fit into a single episode and because it happened to me.

And like any incredible experience that you live through, some moments are seared with perfect clarity in my memory. What it felt like to breathe the night air, what it smelled like, the feel of soft rain on my face. And then there are other moments I can barely remember at all. Blurs of disbelief and terror, memories I can hardly accept are real. Last month we told the first part of this experience. If you haven't heard it yet, I'd recommend you go and listen to it now But if you don't want to take the time, I can tell you that In it, we meet Roger An aging, straight-laced computer engineer

We meet him in a used bookshop some years ago in San Francisco The only odd thing about Roger is his frightened reaction to an offhand mention of Sasquatch. Our discovery of this oddity leads Roger to tell us a story from his unconventional youth of an encounter he'd had on a commune in Northern California where he lived in the 1970s. It was on a warm night in late spring that he'd left the circle of a campfire and climbed the hill beside it, sat quietly in the darkness under an old fir tree. After a while, he noticed the dim outline of a figure striding toward him through the forest, moving quickly and casting long shadows

in what remained of the distant glow of the firelight. As it approached him, he had only an instant to decide whether to speak to the figure or to let it pass by. When Roger got to that part in the story he was telling, he turned his old eyes to me with a question in them. What would I have done if I'd been in his place that night? And I passed the question on to you. Would you have called out? Or stayed quiet and still? Well, according to the responses we tallied up in the comments and from emails we received at podcasts at rei.com,

the majority of you would have remained quiet. That's very cautious of you. Very prudent. Just like Roger. On a last second impulse, an instinct,

a subconscious sense that something wasn't right. Roger stayed quiet and he let the figure walk right past him. And as it passed between him and the distant fire, two things struck Roger.

First was the silence. The figure made no sound as it moved. Listen to yourself walk across a room. Your clothing rustles, your feet make sounds on the floor. Now imagine walking through the woods at night, with only the dim light of the stars and some faraway firelight to go by. It'd sound about as subtle as a rhinoceros, but this figure seemed to glide past, so quiet that Roger could scarcely believe it was real. The second thing Roger noticed just as the figure passed between him and the fire, but it took him a few moments

to realize what he'd seen. For an instant, as the figure crossed the firelight, it was surrounded by a sort of halo of light around its entire body. Well, that didn't strike Roger as strange as it sounds because he knew he'd seen that same thing happen many times before. He just couldn't place it.

Did people always look like that, passing in front of a fire? No. No, but suddenly Roger remembered what did. That big, shaggy mutton mix, one of the dogs that hung around the place. It liked to stay warm beside the fire, and if it happened to stand up between you and the firelight, its thick fur glowed like a halo all around it. This realization had just crept into Roger's mind when more and more facts crowded their way in. The figure had been tall, impossibly tall, now that he thought about it,

as tall as that branch across the way, a branch that Roger would have had to jump to touch. And the arms had been too long and thick, huge hands swinging down past the middle of the creature's thighs. And then there came the smell, following in the wake of the figure and flooding Roger's nose with a scent sharp and strong, hot and overpowering, an animal smell, unmistakably alive. Roger sat up straight under his tree and peered eagerly into the blackness of the bushes that

the figure had disappeared into. What he'd seen replayed over and over in his mind's eye the moment when the silhouette had crossed the fire. Frozen like a photograph in his imagination, he saw it more clearly now than when it had gone by. The glow of the firelight on the fur that covered it. The thick neck and massive head rising to an oddly sharp ridge or peak. Turned slightly toward him like it was glancing in his direction. The moment was so vivid in his memory that as he stared wide-eyed into the black thicket, the darkness seemed to reassemble itself into the shape of the figure standing still in all its

long-limbed inhumanity its shaggy massive impossibility Roger moved to stand up filled with excitement and a sudden impulse to get back to the fire to tell the others of what he'd seen to run with them down the length of the hill

and see if they could head the creature off so maybe some of the others would see it too. But even as he stood up, he realized that would never happen. The thing had moved so swiftly across the rugged landscape that he could never hope to catch up to it. And even as he thought this,

Roger saw something in a chance glint of the firelight. There was a shadow within the shadows of the trees beside him where the thing had disappeared. The darkness under the trees vibrated with the life of an innocent forest knight, but outlined against that stood something perfectly still. Roger couldn't see its outline, except in his imagination, but as he moved to stand up, the firelight

glinted for a moment high up, where a huge, dark eye would be if it was staring back at him. And behind that eye, Roger felt an unfathomable mind at work upon him, sizing him up, deciding how many steps it would take to cover the ground between them, and whether Roger would have time to make a sound or not, and what to do if he did. When the eye winked out, and the darkness within the darkness under the trees began to move, all the excitement and

disbelief and wonder that Roger had been feeling was replaced all at once with a terrible, wild panic. What a rabbit feels in that instant when the snake begins to strike, when it's already too late. Roger began to run. Run in slow motion, it seemed to him. But actually he was crashing full speed straight down the slope, ripping and fighting blindly through the undergrowth, tripping and twisting and tumbling down as fast as he could go. Not fast enough. In his mind's eye he saw the figure again, gliding noiselessly through the night forest, walking faster than he could ever run. And though he couldn't hear it now, over the roar of his breath and the shattered snap of the bushes as he plunged through them, you could feel it coming, gaining on him,

almost upon him in the instant when he stumbled over a root. And was that a branch, ripping at his shirt from behind? Or was the next thing he felt going to be a huge, hard, earthy palm closing over his face. In one last access of desperation, Roger screamed. And as he told this part of the story there, in the dim corner of the quiet bookshop,

he looked like he might scream again. He was pale. He was shaking, visibly, his eyes brimming with tears and staring far beyond me, into the terrible past. His words in this last part of the story had come haltingly, and now they broke down completely and he sat, silent, reliving the terror. When I touched his arm, he jumped, looked at me for a moment like he was surprised to find me there. But you made it, I reminded him. Here you are, sitting with me.

You made it back to the fire, you escaped. Roger's eyes faded away from me as I watched. They let go of the present and began once again to see the things that shook him. He said something, in a hoarse, mumbling whisper so low that I leaned forward and had to ask him to repeat it. That's the worst part, he said. Then he snapped back to the present and glanced around the bookshop. But I can't tell it here. Can I show you something?

Will you come with me? I leaned back in my chair, staring at Roger hard. I didn't like the idea of wandering out into the city streets at night with him in this state, but maybe if you could show me whatever it was, maybe the crisis would pass, maybe I could talk him back to reality. What would you have done? Would you have gone with Roger out into the San Francisco night? Or would you have tried to convince him to stay and finish the story there in the bookshop?

Leave a review with your choice of action in the comment section if you're using a service that allows reviews. Or send an email to podcasts at rei.com. And remember to subscribe so that you can listen in next month and find out whether we think alike. As always, special thanks to Yeti for sponsoring the upcoming season of Camp Monsters. If only Roger had had a Yeti cooler to keep his drinks and snacks pleasantly cool in, he probably would have kept enjoying himself by the

campfire and never had this terrifying encounter. So, visit your local REI or go to yeti.com and find your future Yeti cooler. Who knows? Someday, it might save you from Sasquatch.