I’m just back from 2 months or so out West. A month of that spent on Cedar Mesa in SE Utah, wandering down rarely traveled side canyons and up over mesas. It’s not exactly prime Sasquatch habitat but it was a trip afield and my eyes were always out for the anomalous. I saw no signs of our big footed quarry, not surprisingly, nor much sign of less cryptid critters, no rattlers, no cougar tracks, though I did see bobcat and coyote prints, and heard the latter sometimes at night. Bighorn sheep were seen a few times down those seldom visited canyons and Pronghorn and Mule deer up top but pleasantly, no indication of human presence. None of the ubiquitous bud lite cans and no trails, not even footprints, just wilderness **** near the way it was a thousand years ago.
On setting out from coastal Maine, my intention was to camp somewhere each night along the way as travelers used to—finding a spot that looked good where one wouldn’t be harassed or attacked by marauding bands of any sort of law, out or otherwise and that was not atop asphalt or concrete. I knew this would be easier once I crossed the Mississippi but I didn't suspect Iowa and Nebraska would be so difficult to hide in. it sure is along the I-80 corridor. With the exception of being awoken one morning by tribal police down a heavily rutted and water-holed two-track just South of Lake Erie on the border of the Cattaraugus reservation (They were concerned I was dumping tires or some such.) and the asphalt that 2 of my tires were parked on outside of Moab, Ut, I managed that for 45 nights or so. It was a trip filled with amazing vistas and long eye stretches not to be had in the thickly forested geography of home. Many nights spent perched along canyon rims looking 1000’ down to the wash or river below and not another soul incarnate for miles around, just the ghosts of the ancestors and the mute yet intelligent silence of stone. Segments of that stone had interesting glyphs pecked into it, somewhat representative of a familiar figure.
At the end of my journey, after a sojourn in SLC, UT and along with a fellow conspirator we made the trip out to Skinwalker Ranch, a place I’d heard of but not really known much about. After a wee bit of research we decided to check it out. It is still gated and surveilled by cameras with large no trespassing signs at the entrance to the property. It is also guarded by savage skinwalkers in the form of Owls ( we watched a Great Horned for 10 minutes as it hunted the pasture from telephone pole tops) and dogs, one of which attacked the front tire of the vehicle we were in then assumed such a friendly demeanor so as to lure us out of the car and most assuredly claw our hearts out. We weren’t fooled, though later that night we did return to feed him a blueberry muffin:) Skinwalker ridge, above the ranch was our chosen vantage point and is probably accessible had we been in the Rover but we weren’t at the time so we settled for walking across the sagebrush pasture to the South under cover of darkness. After covering maybe a third of the way, my companion began feeling a sense of dread over not what was ahead but what was behind and suggested we leave. I know to trust that intuition and put up no resistance, so back we headed through the scrub and over the barbed wire into town and a somewhat less dangerous venue--Taco Time for fried empenadas…And that’s about all folks.