Where Bigfoot Walks by Robert Michael Pyle

Where Bigfoot Walks by Robert Michael Pyle stopped my recent cryptozoology obsession right in its tracks, almost as the female bigfoot with the 'pendulous breasts' stops, mid-stride, in the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage. Prior to this, I had breezed through several crypto-themed books, including Darren Naish's excellent Hunting Monsters at the usual speed I apply when I'm going through one of my periodical obsessions. But Pyle's book forced me to slow down. Not because it's bad, but because it is in fact a vast, many-chambered take on the Bigfoot mythos that simply demands that you take your time with it. It's big, yes. It's long, yes. But that's not the point. It's heavy.

Where Bigfoot Walks is unlike any book on cryptozoology you'll ever read. I mean, plenty of great books (Naish's among them) take the time to examine not only whether cryptids exist (spoilers: they probably don't) but why we need to believe in them. It's pretty common for thoughtful but science-minded writers to be skeptical on the subject of 'ol Biggie, and yet still admit a fascination with him. It's only Pyle, however, who seems to have taken this attitude to it's greatest extreme. Pyle examines Bigfoot as a real ecological possibility, as a symbol of the wild and our relationship to it, and as a classic image of mid-20th Century America. The sheer breadth of this book is astonishing. It is simultaneously a monster hunt, a psychological investigation of those who would hunt monsters, a spiritual examination of Bigfoot and the true nature of reality. How Pyle could focus on a (probably) fictional animal to create his celebration of ecology on Earth, and make this never for a moment feel inappropriate, is unbelievable. Where Bigfoot Walks is, incredibly, mostly a legitimate ecology book.

The book chronicles Pyle's attempts to hike across the Dark Divide, a mountain range in southern Washington state, a region that is awash in Bigfoot lore. He's not looking for Bigfoot per se. He's more interested in considering whether Bigfoot could be possible, from an ecological point of view. Where would it live? What would it eat? He's also interested in the people who believe. Why do they need this? Are they capable of being truly scientific? Whatever would they do if they actually caught the bloody thing? It turns out that the ethical ramifications of this are more complex than you would think. And it turns out that some believers wish to remain exactly that - believers, such that if actual proof was brought out into the cold light of day, another of the world's mysteries would be dead to them.

Pyle sympathises with this take, though he does not share it. For him, the scientific discovery of Bigfoot would force governments to place vast areas of the creature's forest home under strict protection. For Pyle, Bigfoot would be the ultimate protected species: one close enough to man to make us uncomfortable.

Where Bigfoot Walks takes many meandering strolls into a variety of realms. As I said at the top, it's a slow, varied read: sometimes light, often heavy. I especially enjoyed Pyle's takedown of conventional European religious society as an alternative to his semi-mythical, Bigfoot-centered nature worship. He believes, as I do, that for whatever reason we have taken a misstep somewhere along the way, and distanced ourselves from the rest of life on Earth, and that this separation is damaging both to nature and to ourselves. To Pyle, Bigfoot is a noble and majestic creature that has been ill-treated by decades of supermarket tabloid ridicule. And though he's writing in the 90s, before the filter bubble age and before cryptozoology became synonymous with close-minded folks who want to believe at all costs, I think he's onto something very important. Bigfoot, and an understanding (if not an appreciation) of fringe belief is more important now than Pyle could ever have guessed when he first penned this incredible book.