After his service as an army scout and guide during the Civil and Indian Wars, my great grandfather migrated to what is now Red Lodge, Montana, where he was one of Montana's pioneering cattle ranchers. My father and grandfather were born and raised in Red Lodge, which sits at the foot of the Beartooth Mountain Range, where both men developed in avid love for the mountains in the wilderness.
I was born in Butte, Montana, and I was raised in Missoula, where my parents passed on their love of the outdoors to my three brothers and I. Family was the most important thing to my parents, and it showed in the lifestyle that they provided us. Everyone should be so lucky as to have experienced the childhood that I enjoyed. Dad had his own business and reserved weekends for family time. My earliest memories are of the weekend spent camping
at one of the many lakes within an hour or two of Missoula. When I was a teenager, Mom and Dad bought some land on a lake in the Swan Valley where we built the cabin, and from that day forward, every weekend year round from Friday until Sunday evening we spent at the cabin, enjoining the lake and exploring the surrounding mountains in the forest. Lily, what did you barking at, Lily? That's my little Junkyard dog pug. She's a she'll bite your leg off. Get them, Lily, get them go.
Get that guy, go get it, Go bite his leg off. I'm sorry. I made my first trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness in the summer of my fourteenth year, and what an incredible adventure that was. My point is here is that I'm quite familiar with the flora and fauna of western Montana. My first exposure to Sasquatch was when my parents took me and my brothers to see the Patterson fit as he was touring it around in the Northwest.
I remember leaving there with this strange feeling of wonder. I don't remember the family ever discussing the film or Sasquatch afterward, and soon it was relegated to the deepest recesses of my mind. In nineteen seventy five, I married a city girl from the suburbs of Chicago. We met while she was living with her aunt in Missoula and attending the local college. That girl took to
the outdoor lifestyle like she had been doing it her whole life. Shortly after our wedding, we made a trip to the local sporting goods store and bought the camping equipment we needed to enjoy what quickly became one of our favorite pastimes. For our first outing together as newlyweds, I decided I wanted to camp somewhere new, so we headed for the Swan Valley with no particular destination in mind. Now keep in mind that the Swan Valley is the third largest intact
ecosystem in the lower forty eight States. Fifteen minutes north of Seely Lake, I noticed the sign pointing the way to a lake I was not familiar with. I was going too fast to make the turn, so I continued on until I found a safe place to turn around, and I returned to the road. If you could call it that, it was a little more than
two tracks wandering off through the forest in the direction the sign pointed. Although Highway eighty three runs the full length of the Swan Valley, at the time, north of Seely Lake was quite sparsely populated and could be a lonely drive, particularly at night. I followed the winding tracks leading to the lake that turned out to be only about a quarter mile from the highway. Although being serviced by Highway eighty three, this area was and remains to this day,
quite remote. I approached the lake and we were presented with the perfect camp site. Stretching out before us was a pristine mountain meadow nestled alongside a brush lined mountain lake. It was quite obvious the area got very little use, as there weren't even the remains of a camp fire anywhere. We pitched our
camp and Sasquatch was the furthest thing from our minds. We set up our tent and we organized our gear, and then we were relaxed by the lake, drinking in the clear mountain air laced with the scent of wildflowers that dotted our little slice of heaven. For me, being in the deep forest is a truly spiritual experience. It's times like that when one can feel how connected
our natural world is. Dinner time came and we prepared a meal of fresh lake trout that we had caught earlier that afternoon, and after dinner we were climbed by the fire until the sun disappeared behind the mountain, a night descended on our little meadow hide away. After retiring to our tent for the night, we both fell fast asleep. Sometime later that night, I was awakened
by the most blood curdling scream I've ever heard. I have to admit I was more than a little disturbed as I lay there, wondering what on earth could make such a sound. Anyone that has spent much time in the back country knows that a loud sound in the distance in a heavily wooded area is kind of a muffled echo. Well, this was not the case with this scream. It was the loudest, highest pitch scream one could imagine, and there was no muffled echo. Whatever it was had to be quite close.
There were a couple of more screams, and then there was silence. As I lay nervously pondering what on earth critter could make such a noise, it dawned on me just how quiet things had become. And I have to say that I'm not sure if the seeming quiet was because of the noise whatever had made it. And it lent a new dimension into the night that made the normal night sound seem insignificant, or if it was actually as quiet as it
seemed. And then the wood knocking started, and again I found myself wondering what on earth could be making that sound. Sounded like two baseball bats being knocked together with great force. There were a couple of more knocks, and then once again silence, or at least it seemed so. I lay there trying to cipher just what woodland creature would make these incredible sounds. And through
all this my wife didn't stir in the least. I'm not sure if she heard what I had heard or not, but she gave no indication that she was awakened. I wasn't about to disturb her. I was more than a little shook up by the whole experience, but after a few minutes I concluded it was just some forest creature that I was not familiar with, and I settled myself down and was soon fast asleep. I ever spoke to anyone, including my wife, about that experience until a couple of years ago, and
had completely forgotten about that night altogether. About that time, I had started watching videos and researching sisquatch. I found the topic quite interesting, and the various stories fascinating. One evening, I was watching a video about sisquatch when they played what they claimed were sidequatch vocalizations, and the memories of that night came flooding back. What I was hearing being played sounded almost exactly like what
I had heard forty seven years ago. They also played wood knocking, just like what I had also experienced that night all those years ago. After realizing that what I had heard was quite possibly a sisquatch, I had the most awful, unsettling feeling in my gut, and it didn't subside for three days. After two years now, I've watching videos and listening to the stories,
and researching sasquatch. I've come to the conclusion that sisquatch, like all Western Montana predators, can be dangerous, but are rarely a threat to humans. One of the most curious conclusions I have come to is they seem to have a sense of humor and enjoy messing with humans, as demonstrated by the harmless act of throwing pine cones and small stones near campers as they gather around a campfire at night. As I recall other unusual experiences I've had in other remote
locations of Western Montana. I can't help but wonder if I've had more encounters than just that one night in the summer of nineteen seventy five.