It's the Timmen Data Podcast Show.
Don't you know that Bigfoot is on the Go.
It's the Timpen Data Podcast Show.
Don't you know that big boot is on the Go.
It's the Den Data pot Cast Show.
Hi, everybody, Welcome to the big Foot Podcast Show.
I'm Gina Halleran and i am Tim Holland we are just real and thankful for each and every one of you joining us every week or every month. We're not really on every week, but and we can't wait to talk about our guest that's coming on.
Who's just uh, just a just a per person who things going on from Bigfoot to butterflies and poetry and I'm sure I'm missing you know. He's also an author, you know, a PhD. Tons and tons of stuff that we're going to get into. And we're just, you know, again, really excited to have him on.
And and he's no rookie to this this Bigfoot things. Now, he's been around.
Now, he's been around for a long time, like somebody who uh you know has had uh you know, contact with Grover Krantz. So you know, from all those guys back in the day that I think they call them the the four Horsemen, of Bigfoot. Bob definitely knows them. So we would definitely like to introduce doctor Robert Michael Pyle. Hey, Bob, how are you welcome?
Dan Show? Do you love that?
One of my one of my dear friends and her husband, uh recorded.
That for us.
We love it. It's just a lot, it's fun, a lot of fun.
So thank you. So yeah.
So here we have you, and there's just so much about you, Bob, So we're gonna have to try to get this all in. One of the first things that I'm noticing here, and I hope I'm pronouncing this right, is that you are a lepidio terrorist.
That's closest lepidopteristist.
You got to get the key.
The lepidos scales or shingles, okay, the scally winged insects and butterflies mons okay.
So are those the only scally winged insects they are? Okay? They what about dragonflies have a little dragons.
If you look at their wings, they're naked, they're clear memories. Okay, has the scales removed and they lose them all through their life. So sometimes a really old butterfly or certain species that lack very many scales are transparent. You've seen pictures of the glass wing butterflies, and they don't have scales, so you can look right through them. But most of the flies have their wings covered with these little shingles
that give them their color. Some are metallic and iridescent their structural scales, and others are pigmented like a skin. Most of them are like that. So I did my doctor work, and most of my scientific work has been with the ecology of rare butterflies.
So do you, And so then obviously you're also an author. Now were you also a professor?
Did you ever teach? Oh? Yes, I've taught at a number of colleges and universities. I was a professor at Evergreen State College, Utah State University, and the University of Montana, and I've taught and lectured at many many of the colleges on a drop in basis. But I went free dance back in nineteen eighty two, realizing that a full time academic career would not give me the time I wanted in the field and for writing. I'm a writer. I've got thirty books of nonfiction fiction and poetry and
of science. But I wanted that time in the field. I wanted the independence and I didn't like committee meetings, so I went independent. I became an independent scholar in nineteen eighty two and a free dance. And I've been teaching, lecturing and doing a certain amount of contract biology, but
mostly my teaching, lecturing and writing and the writing. It's hard to make a full living on writing, as any of your outs, I'll tell you, but that's been a big Those have been my big triangle, the my tripod, writing, teaching and lecturing.
And You've lived across the country, traveled the world, I mean, even over on the East Coast. We live on the East Coast. We're in Delaware. I know you lived in Connecticut at one point, didn't you.
Yes, I did my doctor work at Yale, so I lived in Connecticut for several years. I grew up in Colorado. I've lived in Papua New Guinea, in California and England several years. But for forty six years I've made my primary domicile here in southwest Washington, right in the epicenter of you know whose countryside. We do know who?
We were there last a year, a little over a year ago. We'll talk about that too, because I'm going to ask you how close we were, but we'll get to that here shortly. So do you have a favorite book? I mean, you've all authored. I knew you're well over twenty. I didn't realize it's over thirty outside of the one that we're going to talk about today.
Do you have a favorite of my books? Yes, that's psych asking for your favorite childhood course, the prettiest butterfy, the most beautiful city. But in some ways I could make a case for every single one of my books
for myself. But in many ways, Where Bigfoot Walks Crossing the Dark Divide is my favorite, not only because it drew me very close to the land, which is what I'm all about, but because I'm so intrigued with our common love of Sasquatch, and because of the people that's brought me in touch with, not necessarily the toxic battles in the Bigfoot field. Haven't enjoyed that part so much, and also see seeing people's lives ruined by Bigfoot fever, which can run rampant in a person's life, of course,
but many other aspects I've enjoyed dearly. Have. I love my book Winter Green and It's daughter which is called sky Time in Gray's River. In many ways, my novel Magdalena Mountain is a favorite because it took me deep into my Colorado Mountain territory with another butterfly, another creature I love, called the Magdalena Alpine, a black butterfly that lives in the Colorado Rockies that became a character in
the book. And just recently a few weeks ago, I returned from Chile on a research trip of having to do with a silver butterfly, entirely silver on the upper side, like quicksilver, like the Kroman of fifty four Chevy is that silver? Now that the character in a sequel to Magdalena Mountain that I'm working on now called the Silver Satyr. But so every book of mine, several of my poetry books are very dear to my heart. However, I have to say Where Bigfoot Walks is probably my favorite book.
Yeah, and that's this. This is the book that we're going to be talking about today. It's a really big book too. It's a lot of us in here.
It's it's a substantial book. I have to say. It's a I don't like to speak highly of my own writing. That's a I do believe that pride goes before a fall. And I don't say this in pride, but in many ways I think it is the most substantial in Bigfoot books. And there are several very good big Foot books out there. I love John Binder and Agels. Grover's was very helpful, Jeff Meldrums has profound Lots of others Peter Burns were the best campfire reads by far, But my book is
the one big Foot book that combines. It was written by both a trainedee College as biologists scientist in the field, as well as a literary writer, and it's the one book that tries to combine those two and does not try to either prove, disprove find or not find it, but it goes into the whole phenomenon as to what
it implies in our culture. And I think and I didn't know all the four horsemen, so I didn't know Bob Timmus, the other guys I knew quite well, Peter I knew very well, John Green, I even knew Brenada, and of course Grover and I've had a long history with this and a lot of Native American connection which goes deeply into the book and so if you'll excuse me, I do recommend the book. The book is published, it's currently in print from Counterpoint Press. Is cheap, not an
expensive book. And as that marvelous quotation from Jane Goodall in the backt that she gave me, I love that.
Can I read that? Yes, so she says, I like the book very much. Only I don't know why you were so circumspect to me, the evidence seems overwhelming.
And that's Jane Goodall.
I love so how how and I know the answer book for the audience. How did you meet Jane Goodall?
Well, we had the same publisher and the same editor. I published a number of books with the grand old publisher Houghton Mifflin, which sadly is becoming saint now and the modern pressures at publishing, and Jane was writing her books for Houghton Mifflin too, and the same editor, a master natural history editor named Harry Foster. And I read her, she read me, probably not as much as I read her,
but we got together over that. And then when I first met her, it was at a gathering put together by the Orion Society publishs Oriyon magazine, and I did a lot of traveling readings for them, and I published a column in their magazine for ten years, running fifty two Straight Call Magazine.
Is it still around?
It is? Yeah, didn't know my column anymore. I had to quit when I left to do a year long field trip for another book. But it's still there. Is still a very beautiful magazine with no advertising anyway. Jane received one of their very vaunted awards called the John Hay Medal. I was given to people like the poet Gary Snyder, EO. Wilson, the great biologist Peter Mathis, and people like the people of that caliber, Wendell Berry and
so on. Well, Jane Goodall got it, and they always gave the award on their home ground, except we couldn't go to gone before us to give it to her. So we did it at the Jane Goodall Institute in Washington. That's where I first met her. And when she gave me that quote, she said, Bob, why didn't you have me blurbed the book? I said, Jane, We've tried, but we couldn't reach you in Gombi though, so E. L.
Wilson, this is this. I think I read a book by him and he was I think I did. He wrote a book where it was a letter to a pastor. Yes, and oh my gosh, it was an amazing book.
Well, Wendell Berry, both of them received the John Hay Metal. Both great for writers, but on different ends of the spiritual spectrum. And EO believes that, and I knew him well. He was I found a deser See Society for Invertebrate Conservation. He was as president of that for ten years. I
visited him several times at Harvard and elsewhere. And EO believed that ultimately everything was We're in a material world and it can it's all subject to the laws of physics and ultimate human understanding if we ever get that far. Wendow believed in a spiritual component, of a spiritual plane, and that there were things beyond our reach and our understanding. And they didn't come to blows over that, but Wendell
got They were good friends. But then when we got pretty upset, EO's book called Concilience and Uh, he wrote a counterblast to it. And then this other book was EO's response to that, in the form of a letter to a preacher whom he had known.
And he was very you know, kind to the past and the way he was writing, you know, from a scientist's point of view. I think one of the things that stuck out to me most was this comment that he made that why would God be so cruel as to sprinkle the earth with so much evidence countering what the Bible says.
Yeah, it was not an unkind at all, and he was a very loving man. I think they reconciled before. I hope so. But he didn't want to challenge anybody's faith anymore. When I taught environmental writing in Logan, Utah, Utah State, all of my undergraduates were Mormon. The really is I told him, I'm not going to challenge your faith.
That's ridiculous. There are many wonderful things about it, But I will ask you to think beyond the constraints perhaps of your upbringing, to see the wider world that you might not have been exposed to. And that's what he tried to do. He didn't try to convince anybody of anything, not like some of the stridently atheist writers who want to make you believe otherwise. He had no interest in that. He was an evangelical Southern background. He saw the value
of church in those people's lives. He just wanted to open people's eyes to the great, to the creation in a sense as it can be interpreted through through science. And Wendell I think finally got that. I hope the same way I feel about Bigfoot. I'm not trying to convince anyone or advocate for it. I advocate for an open mind.
Well, there was never any bickering in the big Foot world, right, And being a good.
Friend of Peter's Peter Burn one of my informants for the book and one of my mentors, but also dear dear friend, Peter of course got everybody's wroth. And that went back to the fact that the Tom Slick, the the heavenly named oil man from Texas, Tom Slick the oil Oh.
You know, he that name out for himself.
Only. But of course Peter is early Yetti expedition and in the Himalaya. And then he brought Peter to be the first the leader of the first Big American Bigfoot expedition. Well, these North Americans didn't like taking orders from a young, upstart brit And who was you know, a showman too and very charismatic, and enmity began. Then that never did get over with those guys are all dead now and so we hope we can get beyond those. Uh so, yeah, I had.
I was fortunate enough to interview Peter from my book before he you know, recently before he passed, and that was just just such a blessing to be able to get him on, get him on, you have an interview with him.
So absolutely, and I brought Peter back to Yale to give his seminar. I was so impressed by him when I when I met him in seventy five, I seing my my butterfy research out in Washington, and I was already involved in Echtin Bigfoot, but I was so impressed by him when I first met him, and his his ethic which was, when in doubt throw it out, he took it basically didn't have a scientific background. It was a superb naturalist, which there are, and he and I'd
like this approach. So I actually brought him back to give a seminar Yale, and I had to get permission to the vice president of the university to do that, but when he did, I saw this room full of of eminent Yale pedeontologists, primatologists, anthropologists, biologists who had come to mock, but they didn't mock. They were scratching their heads. Maybe maybe this too when they when they Peter. He
didn't make any converts, nor was he trying to. But he did open some very skeptical, emminent scientific minds that day, and to see that was profound to me and very very impressive. Peter was a very substantial figure in spite of some of the derogation he got from from other quarters. But the fact that he opened those minds, that that's when I said, that's what I wanted to do if I forget to write about Bigfoot is open minds.
Yeah, so you know, okay, I'm sorry, Bob. So so was it you were studying of butterflies and what was the other insect.
And more?
Well, yeah, okay, I always called that moths nighttime butterflies.
That's what several languages do in German. In German they're called the nacht Falters, which means the night fires, Falter means butterfly or schmetter lane. Not very pretty work, but they called them falters and nacht falters. Yes, that's makes sense. They are all more a fancy group of mods e vault to fly by day and consequently more colorful in order to pull all kinds of pranks on birds.
So it was this like, it was your studying of the moths and butterflies that brought you out obviously into nature and in the woods. Is that how your love for your interest for bigfoot came about in a way.
I mean, my first grade love was seashells. Right above me here, I've got a shelf of butterflies. That I mean a shelf of seashells. It's a very shelf my mother built me when I was seven or eight years old, and I have the very same seashells on there that I collected between the ages of seven and eleven. But I lived in Colorado, which was a dumb place to be obsessed with seashells. I was slow study, and I finally began to figure that out about the age of eleven.
That summer, my step brother said, I'm going to go catch bugs for but for scouts, you know, get a meribadge. Do you want to come with me? And I said yeah, and I did. I started to see butterflies, and that day we went went out and I became entranced with them. My step brother quit the next day, and I never did. I'm still doing it seven years later or sixty some years later. But through butterflies and seashells, they were a window on the world on nature, and I became a
very general naturalist. I've tried to study all groups to some extent. I'm very poor naturalists in many areas, but I tried to know something about most living things and a lot about some of them in relative terms. And nobody is a truly deep naturalist. But I aspire toward being deeper every day. Now that that set me up for it. But then in the late sixties for early seventies, got to take a series of classes on Northwest Native
American art and culture. So three classes Northwest Indian two dimensional Art, three dimensional art and Dance and tradition by Bill Holm, the great Northwest Indian authority at the University of Washington. Still alive. Still there, Oh guy, he's got to be well into his nineties.
Good for him.
And yes, well, his classes were some of the best classes I ever took in anything in my life. But one thing he did impress upon us was that every single Northwest Indian group from the Athabascans all the way up in Alaska down to the Hoopahs and below in California, Iraqian and body else, all the Simchions and Bellabella's and Bellakulas and quak Uts and IDAs, kit lops and everybody
else in between. They all had profound Bigfoot legend stories, whether it was sasclats Oma, so many different names, but they're all the same thing. And not only did they have legends and stories, but in their deep spiritual world of seats the sea serpent and the thunderbird and everything else like that, but also they believed in them to a person as actual physical members of their local fauna like skunk, weasel, bear and raven and frog and toad
and butterfly. So that impressed me. And then later so I'm sorry.
So the bigfoot was regarded differently than the thunderbird, is what you're.
Saying, That they regard as being really resident in the in the spirit world. Now the two are permeable, and they go back and forth, and it's changing and so on, of course. But but there are entities that they know. They do not see them in daily life on the res in the woods, in the ocean. They don't see cc the sea serpent anymore. They don't see the thunderbird, and there's some other figures many, but Bigfoot, along with toads and weasels and bears they see, they believe they're
actual animals. And in fact, I've had many occasions with Native Americans. Once I finally learned to shut up and learn the polity, the politests of how you learn, how you speak with people about their culture don't come on as as appropriating and trying to rip off, as so many big Foot people, wannabes and amateurs have done. Then oh, let me not put down the word amateur. It just means one who loves you know at all. But I mean a lot of big from people who are getting
into and don't know much. We'll go down to the hoopas, especially near where the Patterson Gimmwin film was taken, and they, oh, tell me your stories. Yeah, like that's gonna work, you know.
But once I learned how to listen and gently inquire, I've been given many gifts, including a previously untold, unpublished Bigfoot story from the Kidlop that's in my book, and the reviewer in the New York Times book review said that that was the best Native American story he heard and probably the best thing in the book, you know,
so that impressed me deeply. And then that and then there was quite a flurry of activity in the early seventies with the National Wildlife Federation expedition, some others, some recordings, lots of tracks, and then meeting Peter and those those that little triad of events that put me on the on the on the trail of deeper bigfoot studies. And then the good luck of getting the Gougunheim Fellowship, and then the book contract allowed me to devote a year
of my life to big foot studies. And then the time in the Dark Divide that became the not only the powering climax to the book, but also you know, the book was recently adapted into a feature feature film that won It was a.
Good movie movie. It was it was different than the book.
Very different from the book. I'm very different. David Cross plays me in a very different way. I'm a different dog.
While did to Play You.
David Cross played me. Uh. The Deborah Messing played my late wife, Yea. She was absolutely superb. David was superb too. He plays me as beginning as Dufus in the woods because I thought about it. You know, that's kind of hard on the ego. But any quest story like Cheryl Strayed and Wilder Bill Brison and the Appellation or the Magic Fluid, any quest story that the fool's journey in the terror, the hero's quest in the archetypes has got to start out with the hero being dumb stupid so
that you can go out and encounter and learn. It's
the same way in the Indian stories. The Hamitica candidate goes out from the Quakiutle stupid into the woods, encounters back back wallynuxyway, the cannibal spirit comes back and goes through the dances in the Longhouse and then emerges as hamats a chief imbued with the power of Bookless the male Bigfoot, and Toni Kuah, the female Bigfoot, out whose mouth he crawls at the end of the ceremony, Sony the filmmaker is just doing what needed to be done
by making me a dope in the woods, and it's funny. David's hilarious, And then through the process he learns it's just how he compressed forty years of my learning woodcraft into one big hike. And there are a couple other changes about the movie. He veers More tried the butterflies a little more away from Bigfoot so it wouldn't be consigned as just another silly Bigfoot movie. We got a
much bigger audiance that way. Shifted the date of my wife Tea's illness and death so that it becomes a grief trip for me as well as Bigfoot and Butterfly trip. So all that was strategic and I think well done. The movie is beautiful, superb. The sound is a wonderful soundtrack, and the cast is superb. So I had to recommend it streaming. In fact, I think it's free on Prime right now for the first time if you're a member.
We are, but we've already seen it.
Oh yeah, so I got so many questions you want.
To go next on that?
One quick thing for people want to see It's called Dark Divide is the name of the movie the web. The website is Darkdivide film dot com. That's it.
Highly recommend it that it's one of the most unique, maybe the most unique.
Yeah, it was.
The subject there is really entertaining. But as we were going to still get back to the movie. But I've got a question. Yes, sir, can you can you share? So you got a fellowship to take your track? Can you share it?
Did you say Gougenheim Fellowship. I was going to ask you that.
Tell us about that.
Your one of the most prestigious, privately funded fellowships. You can get writers all vye for them, and they're they're not easy to get, and I was very lucky to get it. That's one reason that the movie veered more toward butterflies, because nobody would believe that I got a Googleheim for bigfoot studies. This is just as unbelievable as big City on your lap right nowadays and feeding you bon bons. No, this is but I did, and I think there are three big so that I got that one.
I had a track record of books and research and other grants. Google NYM looks for a track record. It's not for first time or so I had. That second thing was I wasn't trying to prove it or disprove it or find it. Almost all bigfoot writers are trying to prove it or disprove it or find it.
This was not.
It was interested in the entire question of we know bigfoot walks in one way or another. In Northwest culture and in world culture. It's not just limited to the Northwest by any means as a phenomenon. Whether that phenomenon corresponds with the flesh and blood animal is open to question, but we would be silly to discount the evidence as it stands. And so that's the stance I took, and I said, I'm going to look into the Native American culture,
the current white culture. Has it just become a taboid joke or does it retain any of the power and consequence of the Native American myth? Not using myth as a mistake, but myth is a belief system. So because I took that track, and then okay, here's why I really think I got it and got the book contract and got the movie deal. It is because of the cool name, the Dark of God.
What's the history of what's the history of the name dark.
Divid It's funny, really, I'll give it away. I mean, it's a perfect name. It's so it's alliterative, it's beautiful. It sings the dark divide, and it could be the divide between anything between non belief, spirituality and the physical realm, any belief, any divide you want. But it actually connotes a watershed divide between the Cispus River Watershed and the
Lewis River Watershed in Washington State. They both ran the Columbia eventually, but they're a big watershed divide running along a black rock ridge that runs very rocky and craigly and Scregly and Craigie and kind of spooky up in there. And it's wilderness, not protected wilderness, but it's the biggest unprotected wilderness in Washington, and it runs between Mount Adams
on the east and Mount Saint Helens on the west. Now, they're part of the Cascade Volcano chain, which is mostly north south Mount Rainier, Baker, Mount Hood, Mount Shasta, and so on. But Adams in Saint Helens, Patwah, and lou Wit are out of line with the rest of them. They're displaced east and west from one another, and between them runs this black rock extrusive ridge and that is
what's called the Dark Divide. And it's a very wild, very cool, very very difficult place to get into, and it is rife with bigfoot Lauren legend from the click Atats and the Achaemas. So it was the perfect place for me to take my study to the field at the end of my study period, not to find it, not to look for it, but to look for my sense of it after my deep immersion, my deep dig into the lore and the history. And so that's the
Divide part. The dark part's kind of funny for all the things that cannot conveys, means, suggests, and for all the power it gives in spookiness. It's just named for some dude named Dark. Get out. Yeah, most people don't
know that. I don't tell that in the book or not, but it was a pioneer named John Dyke Dark and he was a prospector and then he did a little logging, prospecting, a little trail blazing, and there's a dark meadow and a dark mountain named for him, and then they ultimately named the Dark Divide for him.
So cold sounds cool too, how far north of it's that cool name?
That guy mean really got me the fellowship and the book. That's it. Somebody there had to be somebody on that committee that you're for going and who is interested in this good luck.
It's fascinating, yeah, fascinating.
So so here you are then you're uh, you know, you're oh, my gosh, I have to say this word again. Let people, I'm sorry. It's almost like a pediatrist, but it's a lepidopterist.
Okay.
So you're doing that and like can like. So you're interested in it because you're you're speaking also with Native Americans and then you start are you keeping your eyes open for it? You're wandering around looking for butterflies?
Always, always, always as a naturalist, I keep my eyes open for everything all the time. Bird good, I'm I watch out. It's just in Chile. So I'm saying a new birds, new mammals, new better stuff I've never seen in South America, very different. While I'm looking at everything. But because I know stuff up here, I roughly know things anywhere in the world, what family apparently belongs to or if it's absolutely new. And so as far as bigfoot goes, that's just another aspect of natural history. It's
a big one. I'm always attentive to everything, and uh or I try to be. That's what I aspire to be, and this is a this is I think one reason why a lot of bigfoot hunters and researchers don't really find much is because they don't go out there with much natural history, and they don't go out there with much of a practice in seeing everything around them. They're too tied into their gear and they're you know, they're equipment and their goggles and their guns, and they're not
many guns anymore, fortunately. But if you're wide eyed, like a child to everything around you, and then you're also somewhat experienced in seeing the regular things, then you notice the disconformities, something that's different. The best of the big foot watchers that like Peter Burnet, is a tracker. That's how he found black panthers in India and tigers. He would see the reeds and the rushes, but then he'd see a disconformity, and he'd see at a quarter mile,
oh there's a tiger there. Nobody else saw it. That's what you see. The disconformities are a little different. So yes, I'm always watching, and yes, when i was up in the dark fright court now there, and when I'm in that most appropriate areas, then yes, I'm hyper attuned for a sign or presence of our friend.
So I'm sorry, Bob, So what do you think the different Because I'm assuming that it's pretty hard to just go out into the woods, or go out into a meadow and just find the butterfly that you want to be researching. So that's got to be a pretty difficult job itselfs not la burn can track down a butterfly because the reeds have moved, you know what I mean. It has to be a lot harder. Tell us about that.
It's not very hard to some of my books about butterflies I try to bring people. Got a book called Handbook for Butterfly Watchers. I try to give people the means of just going out in accounting butterflies wherever they are. It's not hard. You just you're attended to their needs, nectar flowers, sunshine, plan for their caterpillars. You learn a little something about the plants. You don't have to be a PhD botanist to know a few plants. And you watch.
You see where butterflies are appearing, what they do, where they go. You go to those kinds of places. It's not hard at all.
It makes perfect sense.
It's a little harder to photograph them or to catch them, but be done with practice. A lot of people do it, and more more photography than catching now and most catching is catching at least now although collecting we would not have the knowledge we have without the many generations of collectors say that right up front. The other thing is it's extremely hard to hurt a population a butterflies in the other insects by collecting. It's like trying to eradicate
insects with the fly swatter. You know they reproduce very well. Collecting is not a problem. If you see a person with the butterfly net, they're doing a service of learning
about the pollinators so that we can all know more. No, but a lot of people going with cameras now, and you'd be surprised that the wonderful picture is coming out with cell phones, even if people are simply gentle go forth as a I met a hoop of woman on the train the other day with who told me Bigfoot has been after her entire life on the reservation, but Bigfoot has also taken care of her. It's a kind of a message there. And she said Bigfoot will take
care of you. Grab my arm, and she said she knew I'd been to Hoopa and was looking into Bigfoot. She says Bigfoot doesn't want to be studied, but Bigfoot will take care of you too, And she said, if you go with good intentions, it's all about you go to fourth toward nature with good intentions, no matter what you're studying or looking for, and it means you're going to be attentive and caring about their needs as well as yours, and then you're going to see a lot more.
This is not a supernatural thing, This is not spooky. This is just common sense. We should go about everything with good intentions, and we should go about everything with open eyes. That's all I try to get people to do. And so Dana, No, it's not hard, just takes a little practice.
Do you feel that's why the Native Americans are just so much more in tune and connected to the topic of Bigfoot or so squats and the colonial your post colonial Europeans are yes.
And it's also the bill Holme was talking about the Indians who still live near the land and the water. City Indians don't see them all the time, or't necessarily believe or have much dollar about it. They become inculcated with city culture. But the Indians who still live near the woods and waters and spend time out there, they've maintained a tradition among many of them even with modern
devices that they have too. Nonetheless, in my experience, not to make it cultural or racial or ethnic generalization, but just an observation of natural history. The Native Americans of whom I'm aware would back up what Bill Holmes said. They tend to be hyper aware of their surroundings, uper aware of their tootemic and natural background, and therefore aware
of this animal as well as others. When I've gave the very first reading for the book at Eliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle in nineteen ninety five, there was a delegation of a dozen or so Quilliad Indians from the Push. This is long before Twilight, so before vampires and werewolves moves into La Push. They had real, real hairy monsters, you know. And they came and they said, we came to see if you treated the subject with humility and with respect. And we see and I'm you know, I'm quaking.
Well did I mean? And they said, and we believe you did. Uh. And then they said, may we play a tape. This is not to get you people to come out to the reservation, but it's to show you that we live among these people. Almost all Indians refer to Bigfoot as a kind of people, which makes sense because they don't have a concept of primates other than
humans and Bigfoot. They don't have New World monkeys. And South American people have a concept to primate Asian people do, African people do, but not North American Indians, so naturally Bigfoot would be a kind of people. They modify it, you know, they'll say uninvolved people are unsophisticated people, or
or they have all kinds of modifications. But the people, so they said, we live among these people, and they played the state, and it was very akin to several of the profound auditory experiences that I've had early in my time and later in my time with Bigfoot. So yes, they are more aware, not by some ethnic descent necessarily, but by living there and carrying forth their fidelity to their surroundings that that most whites and city people have lost.
Sally a great Northwest writer. Sally, sorry forgetting your last name, but the moment said we have given up our we have forsaken our mammalian vigilance for comfort and security. Yes we have, and that's what they.
Mh they have not, And basically I think that's something that we find a lot from interviewing people in the big foot world is that it's people who are doing things out in the woods that aren't bigfoot hunting. They're out there hunting, you know, deer, or they're mushroom gathering, they're camping, hiking, they're training dogs, hunting dogs. We've had stories. I mean, basically, if you want to have a bigfoot experience, find something else that you love to do in the woods.
That's very well put. I gave similar I'd like the way you put in mambar.
Are that absolutely yeah, young man I had.
On another recent train trip, actually was on the same trip. He's not one of these people with big Foot fever who is desperate to go and find it and prove it and get rich and be the one that proves it you. No, he's just looking for a challenge in his life and he'd like to experience his countryside with
some kind of a focus there. And I think what you just said would be perfect for him if he's interested in expanding his post knowledge of the creature, and it's it's whereabouts find something else to Actually I gave him one clue that he might do out at Mount Saint Helen's that No, one's done that I think might be a real eye opener. I don't want to give it away right here, but it's something people I haven't
looked for that I think could be fruitful. But you're quite right, very very few people ever go forth looking for Bigfoot and have any result from that. My three profound track findings and my one potential sighting none of those came about because I was looking for Bigfoot. Patterson Gimmon is an exception, and there are a couple of others, but not many.
What do you think about the PGS film? That's that you brought it up well in.
The back of the of the edition of the book that you have the new edition, RODEVINU, I've given a list of seven things, seven reasons to keep your ping pong ball in the air, not your ping pong ball. Belief necessarily belief, Grover Krant said. I don't believe belief is akin to faith. He said, I accept based on the evidence. So if you have acceptance or call it belief, fine, But if you're open minded and would like to I
would like to believe, would like to accept. As each year goes by without definitive proof, then it gets harder and harder to keep your ping pong ball of hope and open mindedness in the air. So I give people seven reasons to keep that up. I could give them eight profound ones now, but one of them is the PG film, because the PG film, as you know, has never been convincingly debunked by all who have tried. I was on Peter Burns's board for his last big research project,
which had pretty good funding, and the Forest Service was collaborating. Now, they used to conspire with Warehouser to suppress evidence and information, but more recently the Forrest Service and I proved of that, It's in the book. But more recently they conspired with not with Warehouser to suppress, but with Peter burn to try to set up stations to fire a flesh plug
to try to get some DNA evidence. That didn't work out, but in the process Peter had the most definitive edition of the digital version of the PG film made, not enhancing the data with anything that weren't there wasn't there, but bringing out all the data that were there by the best available techniques. And I saw that CD, and I tell you it was profound, so much more eating than the six fifth or six or seventh generation print
that most of us see frequently. You could see the muscles bunching, you could see the after the grass more profound, so many other things, and frankly, I think the biometrics of it. And as I say in the book, meeting Bob Gimnon in recent years and getting to know him, I cannot believe he was lying anymore than I can believe that he would have mistreated his horses, which you would not do. So I think BG is profound, one of the most profound evidences that we have.
That's awesome. I love that.
Yeah, definitely, I think you share that.
You share that with a lot of others because you.
Saw the second generation. I repeat what you said, because most of us don't see the second generation of that film. We see something later, and it's just we just don't have we well, we saw.
It when we were like little kids in the saburies. Yeah, it came out in nineteen sixty seven, right, right, But.
It's but there's there's you know, there's the original I guess on whatever happened to the original one. So then there's the second generation. Is w's what Peter Burne had? Yeah, And that's what you study, because do you Bob?
Did you? You just th first generation is commonly said to be somewhere in a safety deposit box in Florida where nobody knows. The second generation film Renee the Hint and believed he owned it, bought the rights from Missus Patterson. I don't know what became of that second generation film. Peter got hold of it at one point, and uh, this was a digital rendering of that that brought out its data to the first extent. I didn't see the
actual film projected. I saw this digital rendering, which was probably even better, and uh, that's what I saw.
Yeah, Oh no, well that were you? Was you remember Henry Franzoni. Was he part of helping you with that?
Oh? Yeah. Henry's brilliant man. I think he recently passed, didn't.
He he did?
Yeah?
Yeah, we saw him a couple of months before he passed, right, Yeah, we were up there in your area and had lunch with him.
I haven't seen him in recent years. Henry was a weird and strange and wonderful man and very very smart. His work on nomenclature of the countryside was was brilliant and what do he knew about Native Americans, and his book is very intellectual and very very challenging, and I think extremely important. Henry was an important man in the field, but I think his intellect and his h the rarefied nature of what he was doing, escaped a lot of people.
I think so too. Yeah, and he was definitely missed. He was gone way too soon. So what do you hope the readers will walk away with after, you know, diving into your book.
Well, I hope they'll come out with a better sense of the depth of the Native American the depth and breadth of the Native American attachment to it, and the fact that it's in their great sense of the physical world as well as in their spiritual pantheon, which they're able to integrate and separate in a way that my mind doesn't do. I just don't do that, I am, but I don't attempt to. So that's one of the
main things. The second main thing is, well, I've really wanted to see the it's a political book, and that I really want to see the Dark de Eye protected as a federal willderness area before I croak. It's not going to happen in this administration or possibly not with my current member of Congress, though she is pretty good, she might not do that. Our district has been jerry mandered so that we've lost a lot of the conservation voters in itself. But someday I like to see that
wilderness really protected. That was one and not just that place, but all the remaining wilderness. That was a big point of the book was Bigfoot is a metaphor for wilderness, but not just a metaphor, an actual argument for protecting these places. Not that I think Bigfoot's restricted to the old growth. I don't. I think it's pretty it's pretty opportunistic in other kinds of logged over lands, as well
as almost fringe agricultural lands. The third thing is that I would like people to go forth with great respect for this animal, and a great respect for the traditions, and above all, maybe an open mind. If they already believe or except, fine, maybe this will reinforce them if they're a little bit circums respect. As I remain a little bit, then I'll tell you why before we finish. Then fine, maintain that, But don't dismiss this thing out of hand as if it were silly. Don't dismiss this evidence,
you would be foolish to do so. Keep an open mind. There's no big biological, evolutionary, biogeographic, metabolic, physiographic, historical, or any other scientific reason why this animal could not, should not, or does not exist. The only major objection to it intellectually, as far as I'm confirmed, is the absence of definitive proof, and that's a big one. But there are also arguments why that might be the case that do not involve
the supernatural. That's another thing from my book. You will not find any comfort in it, for if your field of interest is the WU, it does not bring forth any supernatural approach or comfort. Not that I put these people down or say they're wrong. What do I know. I'm just a guy and just a dude interested in listening. I don't know. They might all be right, I might all be wrong. But to me, I'm a materialist biologists who feels that the laws of physics are the extent
within which we may all operate. All creatures and and everything in Bigfoot must, must, must, must conform to that. That's my personal limitation and view. So you will find that in the Book of Physical and Common Sense Approach to the animal and a scientific one, not a woo one. And and fourthly fun. I want you to have fun doing this and not get trapped in bigfoot fever to the extent the rest of your life, as I've seen it happen with a number of people.
Yeah, I think a lot of people. And there's there's no money in bigfoot. There's no money in bigfoot. You're not you know what, even if you do find Bigfoot, the second that we have like an actual specimen, I would imagine that it would be swept out of their hands and a heartbeat and given to people like you, people with PhDs and scientists, and I mean, but I can't imagine it really like going too far for a normal person to find an actual specimen.
Kate Wolf has a great song about gold in California and she says, there there's no gold. I hate to tell. Yeah, the gold in California is you know, it's all about the gold is the dried vegetation, and the comer is gonna catch it no other that's right. And it's it's a shimera. It's a if you're going out for fame and fortune and as if you could prove it by
a photograph forget that these days. But if you're going forth out of intellectual and personal curiosity about the world and an honorable approach to caring for the world, that's the other thing about the book. I want people to come away from the book with the sense of caring and conservation for the land, but also for the animal. And as far as should it be found, should it not be found? Sure, I'd like the romance of let
the mystery be in some ways. I think, sure the mystery should maintain, we shouldn't find it to broadcast it and all that. But on the other hand, if we're going to protect this landscape, I think the definitive presence of Bigfoot would be a major, major means of doing so. And it could go wrong. There's a chapter towards the end of the book about a protocol for encounter, and as we know from every be scientific science fiction movie, you know, when you find the creature, things could go wrong.
I tried to give some ways in which we might avoid that happening. But those are the things I try to bring out in the book, and questions as much as answers.
So here's another question, because I'm just getting nervous just because we're running out of time, and this is a really important question, especially for someone like you.
So what do you think that like?
Let's just say that bigfoots exist, what is it like? Where did it come from? Where did hevroll from?
That one is very important. How much more time do we have?
We have about seven minutes.
Okay, give me a couple to tell you about my own encounters.
Yes, I mean we might need to go past and do some editing. We might have to edit this out.
Yes, some things you could easily edita. I want to give this reply good attention without going too long. I've just had a very good correspondence with a a man in Texas about that whose big thing is whether or not Bigfoot has a so called broken arch like the the other great apes, or whether it has a fully a human like arch that enables a push off with the toes. And he thinks it does. He thinks he's got the evidence. I think he's probably right. Jeff Meldrum
is not so sure about that. And Jeff is not to be taken lightly. He's a great intellect and a great scholar on on and the poids. We can say on the prep but the foot aside the animal is clearly a great ape, therefore as city primate, and now the taxonomy of primates is mixed up. They're those who still believe in the in the separating the family Pongity in the family humanity. Most uh primatologists do not all the apes. They would put in the amenity, the family amenity,
and there is no family pongity. There is only the subfamily Pongini of the humenity, and that includes the three species of pongo, the orangutanks. And then there is the the subfamily of the gibbons. And then there is a Homo ninety Homa nine nine h O m I nae, which is the subfamily the Homenity, which includes the great apes, the great apes, not the gibbon and not the rings, and so we're really in the same subfamily as the
other living great apes. Then you get to the tribe level, which isn't always employed in zoology, but the hamon ninety and that's n I n i, So that's where ham comes from, only unless it also includes bigfoot. The Penniney are the chimps and bonabos, and the Gorilini are the three species of gorillas. So the question becomes, does Bigfoot belong to one of those three tribes or will it be shown to be a different tribe, its own tribe
and maybe even its own subfamily. Probably not its own subfamily, because as we know, if it walks, it it probably shares many humanite traits. And I think this cat in Texas is probably right about the foot, sorry Jeff, And it's probably I think it's probably going to be in the in the tribe Harmoninety with us. I think it will be shown that there are two species in the Homoninety.
There were lots of species in the Hommoninety before, it's just that they're all extinct, you know, other other members of the genus Homo even now, will Bigfoot being the genus Homo with us. Probably not. There's probably sufficient differences to at least erected genus. And of course Grover Grants described it as a species of Gigantipithecus, which we do know exists in the fossil record, and we don't know we don't know enough about it to know where it
actually would fall in that primary taxonomy. He called it Gigantipithecus canadensis. Well, it that name doesn't stand because to describe a species you have to have the type specimen, which we do not have. Jeff described an Igno species, which is a fossil species from the tracks. He did that in the straight literature, not in the Bigfoot literature. One of the most profound things that's ever been done about Bigfoot. Most people don't even understand it or know that.
But it doesn't count as the species to prove it as a living animal because there was no type specimen. Still is very profound. So I think it's most so having where did it evolve from? Well, did it evolved from a some common ancestor of jimp's, gorillas and humans that also gave rise said the all Mosty, the Dalmas, the yah Ran, and the Yeti if they exist to Bigfoot. So at least five species probably that descended from a common ancestor. And what its common ancestor was, where it
broke off from gymps, bonaboas and gorillas. I cannot say. We need to know a lot about DNA, but I think it's but there's no problem with this evolution, no problem whatever. Surely an ape, it's surely a great ape and it is surely not surely, but I think likely In the in the tribe Harmon ninety with its own genus, I love that.
That was a really great answer.
Yeah, the great.
Answer, the correct answer for now as pertains to the main accepted taxonomy and Primates says we are now almost everybody just screws us up, and they also want they get their nickers in the twist about is it an apors or a human? That's like, you know, humans are a.
Right on the last day of your track, you had something happened to you. Did you want to share that?
Yeah, that's that's a good place to do these experiences. First, I just said, the book starts out my first profound experience on Mount Saint Helens in nineteen seventy Halloween knight, when I had my first profound auditory experiences, and I was a student of natural history, knew the birds, knew the mammals, and the vocabularies. This was not one of them, and it accorded with Indian recordings later on. So that
was way back in nineteen seventy. But come forward my month in the Dark Divide, I had three or four pretty profound vocal experiences. But the last night in the Dark Divide. Coming out, I didn't want to go right back to the freeway. I had been in the wilderness for a month, So by coming back on tiny roads and my little old Honda on the edge of the Dark Divide by Oak Pass by Mount Saint Helens, I could stay in the mountains one more night before I
had to leave. Well, just coming down from the Elk Pass, i'd stopped to take a pe and have one celebratory beer to doast the Dark Divide my month up there just one beer coasting down onto the road, gonna start up in a minute, but I heard some whistles, so I just coasted down by the slope and from this this angled bank on my left, under low alder trees, came these whistles so that were not invocabulary of any birds and mammals I knew, and they were weew weew,
and quite shrill and fairly repetitive with some variation. And as I coasted along the bank there they moved with me. Hmm, along with me. And just as I stopped with my lights off only my brake light on, and was about to set the break and get out with my flashlight and look up into the it was dark, it was lightly raining, no trees overhead. Something hit the top of my car with a loud report. Mm hm. The smooth muscles take over that point, you know. And I didn't
take my pass, but I did skid otto. If you could burn rubber and the wold hand on a dirt road in the rain, I did. And about a quarter mile later I said dummy, you know. And I went
back and got and saw nothing. But I came back three days later, and where the sounds had emanated from and where the objects struck the top of my car, there were a set of impressions across the mossy shale and then on to softer Mount Saint Helens Eruption Pumas, where about a half a dozen of the tracks took pretty well, not well enough for a cast, but I had the pictures are in the book, well enough to get measurements on three of them, and they were smack
in the middle of Peterburn's database for the mean and the median reported tracks just under sixteen inches long, just over four and three and a half on the heel. And then they came across right from where the sounds had come and then went up onto a game trail and disappeared into the oak tracks. So what can I say? The tracks the sounds right there? How did you stick?
What hit the roof?
I found owned a stick right there, cherry and wild cherry that was twisted off. The Indians say they twist them, not break them. And I had my tea throw it at the car several times and it made the appropriate sound. Now in the movie, the end of the movie recreates the scene and it's the betstanding. It's they got it almost exactly right aditions, but they got almost exactly right. And the music the Chris Noble Selch of Nirvana recorded for the for this was the most perfect ending for
the movie. But in that they make it a rock instead of a stick. But the stick was there not? Was that the same stick? I don't know, But I do have the other stick on which I cut niches to measure the track, and that is is real. What do you say about that? So that was well? Tea was It was a very very level headed Swede and not particularly interested how they skeptical saw the Elk tracks on the game fail and said, oh, those are just Elk tracks that have run together. She didn't take it
particularly good look. But nine years later I had a Japanese film crew out there. They came to do a Bigfoot sequence for this crazy Japanese Hollywood Squares natural history program they had, and they brought a crew of nine, and my God took them up into the Doctor Viken. We find tracks. Now, well, no, I'll show you where you know some Bigfoot like stuff, and I'll show you a wilderness and you know this old tree has been busted up the way Bigfoot does not the way woodpeckers do. You.
I show them some things to photograph. But on the way up, Bam, I almost step on a track in just about the only open soil. Otherwise it's rock, pine needles or fur needles, snow and so on. But there's one bit of pubis they're open and there's a darn good track, and it made their entire trip from Tokyo.
I tell you that. Yeah, I got a cast. And I came back a few days later with a reporter from the Oregonian, not because I wanted publicity for this, but he was doing a new interview with me for they chosen the book for a book club for the newspaper. You want a new interview and I said, come on up to the hills, I'll show you something cool. And we put plaster in, but it didn't set before it got cold, and it was too thin. Never got a good cast, but got the photograph of the past in
the cast. And when I showed that to Tia, she said, h maybe I was hasty. That was the second time. The third time was ten years after that, a quarter mile away or less. By the way, that second track was about three hundred yards from the first one. The first set of tracks the same proportions nine years later, suggesting the same animal on the same home range over
nine years. Ten years later, I was a few hundred yards to the south over the past the other side on a small logging road that went a little ways, and I was walking looking for late season butterflies. And on this shale slope, a loose siltstone slope that was eroding, was a set of impressions going up the slope, two
of them, one adult size, one juvenile size. The best one of those in the firmest of the silt, were measurable also, but not firm enough for a cast, and they were the very same proportions on the adult sized one and there was a juvenile sized one. And then up at the top where there was a horizon between the softer siltstone and the looser and the firmer, there was a horizon with a crack, and there were rodent holes, there ground squirrel dens, and there were hand plunges. A
cast of a hand plunge into a gopher hole. It's very impressive, with an inch and a half fingernail came out in the plaster. But these were hand plunges, apparently, according to my hypothesis, into these gopher holes. And I interpret it as potentially not only a hunting incident, but also a tutelary one where the adult was perhaps teaching
the young how we do this. And there are many many Clickitat and n Acamas stories about bigfoot catching rodents in this manner and also by moving rocks, and some evidence of that. So do any of my experiences prove it. No, But I do not have a better hypothesis, which still leaves me in the territory of not knowing to where I can say. I will not say I believe because I grow over. Belief is faith. You don't prove faith,
but accepting it. Like Jane I'm not quite there yet at this point, but boy, I'm farther than I was. When I came out of writing the book, I expected to come out, oh great story, but no, cigar.
No.
I came out with an open mind, which I considered a really big gift. Well, now, twenty years after the book three Profound Track Sightings, my mind is even wider open. And then three years ago this week I was coming back.
Next week, I was coming back from eastern Washington butterfly trip, coming over the very same road that defines the northern edge of the Dark Divide Wilderness, Highway twelve in Washington, running up to White Pass, the very same road where one of the best biologists I know, a total bigfoot skeptic, called and who wanted me to not do the book, not take the ground, because he thought it would ruin my reputation in my career. He called me when I was doing the book and he said, Bob, I've seen
it on Highway twelve. I saw from one side of the road stand in the middle of the road, squat urinate and then walk just like just like Patty, off to the other side of the road into the forest. He said. I went from me a total skeptic to a big foot born again in ten seconds on that same road three years ago, I'm coming up to white pass elker in the road. I stopped so I don't hit the elk like I did a poor deer day before yesterday, right above my house. And yeah, very sad.
All these years, never hit a big mammal until two days ago on Earth Day. I almost hit these elk, and that can be lethal to them. I barely stopped in time. And so after that there were several of them. Let them get across. Went slowly so because there were more. And what did I see in my peripheral vision but a dark form up on the cut bank just to my left, about fifteen feet away, about eight feet up, about fifteen feet away. And I swiveled my head. What do I see? I see? I see, Patty, I see
the standard logo. You know, the most recognized, one of the most recognizable symbols in the world today is the walking bigfoot. I wanted a symbol for wildness. Well I am now I saw it a word. That's what my
eyes told me. Moving out from behind one tree across a very not only about only about three feet and then behind another big tree, and then into the right for maybe a second or two or three at the outside in failing light, late in the day, rapidly and I couldn't stop because there was a truck on my ass. I go back. There was a blizzard coming and it was up there. But I came back a couple days later and I could find nothing. It was hard pan up there. Cliff Cliff went and had to look for me,
and he couldn't find anything either. But I did find a mile away a lodge, mountain lodge with a big bigfoot sculpture in front of it. And when I would talk to the people about have there been any recent sightings, they say people come in here every day and we get so many reports we've stopped counting. This is a mile so I feel I have very likely seen the animal now.
So now here's a question for you. So did you see the animal or did you not see the animal in your view?
In your head?
Yeah, certainly in my head. I don't know. I'm a human being. I'm a big footer subject to projection like any other. The light was fading, it wasn't yet dusk. I saw color, saw the brown, and I saw upward legs, not fore legs. I saw a swing of the upper appendages, and I saw a large head. This is what I see in my head that I saw, but very fast, and it was fading light. And I am suggestible as a bigfoot person, so it was a definitive proof to me. I'm sorry, I'm a biologist. No it was not. I
cannot say. I cannot tell you that I saw bigfoot, but I can tell you that I think I did.
And what if you had a sighting like your friend where it's walking across the streets.
That's what I need. I need tell better than that to put me over the edge, to put me over I'm not I can go there. I can easily go there if I need something. And I've had more than most. Three profound back sightings, several profound auditory experiences, and one I think probable sighting. But it's not enough, because I am a trained biologist, and I need and I'm not a skeptic of bigfoot, because I've already told you there's no logical reason it would not be here. Just Harry,
graded we can be here. It can be here on the barren land bridge too. No that I can only say, I'm at about ninety five percent right now. That's a great Yeah, maybe I'm ninety eight, but that's what I've got to leave you with.
Well, well, that's awesome to have a PhD tell us that. That's pretty inspiring, you know, because sometimes you talk about it and people are like, girl, you're crazy. It's like, but it's you know, when you have so much evidence that's there, you know, eyewitness sightings, footprints, we have it on film, you know, we have some pictures. You know.
Well, I think it's extremely hardening. The fewer people were saying you're crazy. And when the Oxford group of scientists said send us your stuff, and a whole lot of people said hair and poop and and things. And they came and they did it all. They did it all in the DNA time. When they came back and said, so we got bear, we got help, we got a nylon, we got human poop, we got all kinds of things. Nothing yet, but keep it coming. These are Oxford scientists.
So the Titan is turning on the UH, on the UH, on the wall between the world. There's hope that people will look carefully, not only I mean people with so called credentials. You know, scientists can be the worst of the non scientific types. They can have some of the worst closed minds of all. But there is no scientific cabal against the Bigfoot people, which a lot of people are paranoid about. They think there is a little bit of intellectual inferiority complex here.
Uh, they don't mean do you mean what do you mean by that? Like that there's a cabal against them.
Because they don't have a PhD, which you know, it's just another degree. I knew as many dummies as Yale as I did anywhere. It's just a lot of work you do and you get just another I mean, it's it's important to me. It lets me cash checks and strange. I use it where it's appropriate, and I do respect it. PhDs are not given lightly. Okay, it does mean something, but it doesn't put down anybody who doesn't have one. Your experience, the best lepidopterist in Washington, probably in the
United States, the most knowledgeable, is a teamster. He's a truck driver. He didn't like academia, but he's the best self taught biologist I know. But he's he's no lesser than I am because I have a PhD in ecology. But sometimes, oftentimes a lot of perfectly competent, sensible, smart bigfootners get a boulder on their shoulder about PhDs because they have I have never heard of this, No, it's
it's in a lot of the books. People will say they won't listen to us, they won't look at our stuff, they won't put But there's a reason they get grants. They've got to pay for their labs, you know, bring them, don't look at your stuff. The Oxford people are doing it. But sure there are some there are some snotty uh snobby PhDs and primate people who think it's a joke.
Sure of course there are. But but there are plenty of others who are perfectly interested and would look at evidence if they had, you know, the support to do so. There's no but there's no scientific cabal against the bigfoot people. And I think that's getting through, sorry, starting to get through.
That's great, that's awesome. So last plugs. Let's last plugs for the book.
And the movie.
Can share with the audience how they can buy your book and then watch the movie.
You can buy the book in the obvious place that I don't like to push kid, we will talk.
We'll talk about someone consciousness.
Yeah. What I push is, uh, basically can do everything that that thing can do for you. Called bookshop dot org, okayshop dot org and theyn get any book in print for you just like the other one can. And the money goes to independent bookstores.
Oh that's so awesome.
Or you can get any bookstore you want to walk into to order it overnight. It's easily available. It's published by Counterpoint Press, a mainstream publisher based in Berkeley.
So I think I bought it, Bob, I think I bought the book based on your recommendation years ago. I think I bought it, Pals, that's not right. This is a great places because I heard you tell me that, not me, but tell someone that.
And I said, oh, independent bookstore. It's in Portland. It's a wonderful place to go if you're ever in Portland. And you can do that online too, Just go to Powells Books online, the Powels one get it there too. You'll have it in a couple of days for under twenty bucks. It's a burden. And then the movie.
Did you buy it when we were there?
Yeah?
I ordered online?
Okay, that's great. Yeah, the movie outrime or several of the several of the streaming services of the movie. But I recommend getting the DVD which has a second, real second DVD with all the outtakes and it's got all of the best. One of the best Northwest Indian storytellers, Harvest Moon, who played the grandma in the movie, and she told Bigfoot stories by the campfire, but that all got cut out because of the time of the movie.
And they're wonderful and their original and they're authentic. She does it professionally, and they're all on that second disc. So you can get that DVD with the with the Indian Bigfoot stories around the campfire authentic by going to the website Darkdivide film dot com and bok around find their merch page. I'm going to do it.
Yeah, we're going to do because I want to see that.
Good that Tim and Day show. Now I get to be an there, Griffin and all the other good folks you've had there. Yeah, your podcast, and I'm so honored to be on here.
We are so honored.
Bob.
I am like, you're like my new favorite person in.
Your mind, both of you. Really, He's gonna hear this thing.
Yeah, we're super excited. We're super excited, go.
Forth into the wilds with open eyes, open ears, and good intentions. Yep.
Wonderful little Thank you. Thank you so much, Bob, Thank you everyone else for tuning in. Thank you, see you next time.
Thank you, Bob, see y