Faith

By Crispin Sartwell

Friends, I have always believed, and I still believe.

Ray Wallace, who died last month at the age of 84, had fascinated or amused the world for decades by presenting us with the spoor of Bigfoot, bargainbasement yeti of the Great Northwest. Indeed almost all the "evidence" for the existence of Bigfoot emerged from Ray's place, and his family now says that the famous grainy film of Foot in fact depicted Ray's wife Elna in a gorilla suit.

According to AP, the hoax started in 1958 when Wallace tried to scare thieves away from his logging trailer by surrounding it with huge footprints. In a moment of crime-prevention inspiration, he grabbed his chainsaw, fabricated some big wood feet, strapped them to his boots, and started living large. Things just grew from there, according to Dale Lee Wallace, Ray's nephew, because Ray was too embarrassed to admit the hoax.

In fact, Bigfoot was eventually the subject of books, films, and television shows. He was credited with reviving the tourist industry in the aptly named, economically depressed town of Eureka, California.

And, in the face of the Wallaces' confessions, I still believe. Somewhere in the north country rain forest there yet lurks nature's crowning achievement: twelve feet tall, conspicuously hirsute, with feet like Darwin's snowshoes. For me, Bigfoot is a matter not of reason, but of faith. And faith, as we know, is adamantine: it is a rock at which, once tied, we are lashed eternally.

Though the usual roster of terrestrial creatures is varied, it is mundane. Nature in all Her miraculous profusion is fundamentally boring. Indeed I learned to recognize most of the earth's animals from childish picture books before I was two. Lions and tigers and bears? Yawn. Rhonoceri? Spiny echidna? Seen one insectivorous monotreme of the genera *Tachyglossus* and you've seen them all. I need to believe that there's something out there that can capture my imagination. Something big. Something hideous. Something that could perhaps mate with our women.

Indeed, I regard the recent outpouring of news stories exposing the hoax as a direct test of my faith. The less likely something is to be true, the more difficult - and hence more admirable - it is to believe it. And no one has ever proven that there aren't Bigfeet (Bigfoots? Bigfoot?). Get me? You're not going to convince me that Feet don't exist unless you can inventory all the items that do, and demonstrate conclusively that there are no Feet among them.

Looking at it from that angle, it is irrational not to believe in Bigfoot. The burden of proof is surely on anyone who denies it. And every story that seems to show otherwise simply confirms for me the truth. It is simply part of the massive effort of nefarious forces to disguise the clumsy existence of Bigfoot.

There's something peculiarly American about a dimestore abominable snowmen turned media star, who in his declining years is embroiled in scandal and self-doubt. That's been the career arc of Robert Blake and Bill Clinton, for example. Only a fool would argue that Robert Blake and Bill Clinton do not exist. These are American icons, and to deny the existence of any of them is to attack our sacred nation.

And though I am a patriot, I also recognize the obvious truth that many other so-called "mythological" creatures may exist here and there around the world, such as the Loch Ness Monster, the Giant Rat of Sumatra, Osama bin Laden, even Elizabeth Dole.

If someone came out now with a letter from an unknown ancient saying that Christ's walking on the water or rising from the dead was a hoax, you'd keep right on believing, wouldn't you? And in fact, that something is a hoax doesn't entail that it's not true. That someone is out there stomping around with big wood feet of his own making has no tendency to undermine the existence of huge, cool anthropoids. So never doubt that Bigfoot bestrides the far west yet, filling its mysterious backcountry with the primal, plaintive baritone groan of his lonesome mating call.

Friends, I still believe.

____

Crispin Sartwell writes from Railroad, PA.