Yesterday, I loaded up the van with coffee and headed to my first BIGFOOT festival! I’ve been to a couple of U.F.O. festivals and more comic book conventions than I can count, but this was my first Bigfooter event, and I was surprised by two things: How CROWDED it was and how varied the AGES of the attendees was! You had little kids, kids in strollers, teens, parents, middle agers, and folks with walkers… Who would have thought that Bigfoot was a multigenerational phenomenon?
The other thing that surprised me was how MANY people were there! I pulled up to the venue about ten minutes before the doors were supposed to open, and I had to park half-a-block away from the main building. My uncle, Randy (who you might remember from his BIGFOOT book and stories, he even had his own Bigfoot encounter, which I interviewed him about) was supposed to go with me to the event, but when he saw the LINE of people waiting to get in, which was wrapped all the way around the building, he decided to skip out. (And I don’t blame him… Our whole family has agoraphobic tendencies, but I was determined to overcome them, IN THE NAME OF JOURNALISM!)
The line to get in was pretty long, but I survived…and I found someone while waiting!!!
Once inside the building (it cost $25.00 for an adult for the day,) I grabbed a program and was giving a cool badge on a sQuatch fest lanyard.
The Cowlitz County Expo center is pretty big, and for this event it was divided into sections. To the left, where you needed to go if you wanted to use the bathrooms, you would find some booths selling arts and crafts, Bigfoot stickers, and other goodies. To the right was more goodies, smoked meats and kettle corn and such, as well as the entrances to the kids' play area (called the “Kids' Cave,” although I admit, I didn’t venture inside to see what was involved) and, in the Loowit Room (incidentally where my older daughter got married!!!) was the Brew Mountain Beer Festival. Needless to say, this room was PACKED with folks who were getting their whistles nice and wet. (I don’t drink very often, and I don’t care for beer at all, so again, I didn’t venture in---although I peeked inside, just to see what was up!) Outside the main building, there were concession stands, a building with “story time” stories, and a building with a flee market going on… plus some cool wood carvings on display. (Sadly, I didn’t catch the artist’s name…)
In the main event area, which took place in the Mount St. Helens Room, they had a number of booths for folks selling t-shirts and honey and tons of other things, authors signing their books, and several of the speakers could chat with attendees.
Speaking of speakers, I ran straight in, as soon as I got to the building and grabbed a seat so that I could hear Dr. Jeff Meldrum, who is a professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University. He gave an interesting talk about the POSSIBILITY of a viable species of anthropoids surviving in the mountainous regions of the Northwest, and although it didn’t convince me that there ARE Bigfoots in them thar’ hills, he makes a compelling case for the plausibility. (I should mention that I am a skeptic… I love the stories, I love hearing about people’s encounters, and I love considering the possibilities---but I’m going to need to see a body before I’m convinced…) Regardless of my opinions on the subject, the talk was well attended, with almost every seat being filled AND folks standing in large numbers along the sides of the presentation area by the time Dr. Meldrum was finished.
I should mention, however, that not EVERYONE was pleased with Dr. Meldrum’s approach. There was one older gentleman wearing an army jacket who approached Meldrum and asked a question (which I couldn’t hear) who then stomped angrily away. Dr. Meldrum then made a point of saying that he was a scientist who looked at EVIDENCE, and that he didn’t like to speculate about topics that were less grounded in physicality (I assume he meant things like U.F.O.s and psychic phenomena and other paranormal topics.) He told folks that other speakers would probably be addressing THOSE types of topics later in the day, but for HIM, sasquatches represented a physical, biological relic hominid population, not a mystical or magical monster. As I said, not everyone there was happy to hear him say that…
After Dr. Meldrum’s talk, I walked around and looked at a few booths---and I was somewhat surprised that, despite the large number of people in attendance, I only recognized one face, the host of Pacific NorthWeird, a paranormal themed group, who I’ve seen at a number of festivals and conventions in the area. (I don’t recall the host’s name, but I follow his group’s activities on Faceboot AND YooToob…) If I was a REAL journalist, I would have stayed for all of the speakers and for the band, Giants in the Trees, who were scheduled to play that evening at 7:00 P.M., but I was starting to get hungry, so I quietly slipped out the doors, past the woman walking the big old pig on a leash, past the people in flannel and stocking caps, and past the guy in the Bigfoot costume (who gave me the great photo that you can see at the top of this post,) and headed for the nice quarter-mile walk back to my car.
I would say, for a group of people who wanted to make a day of it, wanted to come listen to a bunch of folks talk about their Bigfoot experiences and detection methods, or for people who wanted to drink a bunch of beer, this would have been a fantastic event! As a non-beer-drinking skeptic, however, the $25.00 entry price was a bit steep. I appreciated Dr. Meldrum’s talk, and I can tell how much effort went into making the event a big deal---and to be fair, most of the folks who were there seemed to be having a pretty good time! (It was VERY noisy!) It’s not very likely that I’ll be attending next year, unless they get some well-known speaker who I want to see. Still, for Bigfoot fans, I’m willing to bet the event was a great time…
[For the curious, I took all of these photos with my phone---because I don’t have a real camera. I think I SHOULD have a camera, but society hasn’t decided to give me enough money to be able to afford one---yet… Someday, maybe!]
Anyway, thanks for reading!!! And get out every once and a while and experience the local ENTERTAINMENT!!! If you go, they'll keep doing it!!!
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Supreme Bunny Lord of The P.E.W.)
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