It was some time after midnight.
My son and I were zipped up in a little two-man tent on a sand bar off a little river,
way down in the floodplain.
The fire outside had already burned down to just coals, and the night had gone from the
peaceful woods kind of sound.
To that wrong kind of quiet that makes your hair feel like it's going to almost stand
up.
It was just me and my son, Ethan.
We were both in the tent, and Ethan was asleep, and something was standing right outside
our tent.
I mean, right outside the tent.
So close, I could see the shadow of its legs against the tent wall when the last bit
of firelight flickered.
I heard the sand and the small gravel out there crunch under its weight as it shifted,
and then I heard it draw in a deep breath through its nose, like it was smelling us through
the tent.
You know how close something has to be for you to hear it smell and snip?
That's how close this thing was.
I had one hand on Ethan to stop him from making any noise if he woke up, and my other hand
was wrapped around the grip of my little 38.
I knew that if whatever it was out there decided that the thin fabric of the tent wasn't any
kind of a barrier, well, that little pistol would probably do more to piss it off than
to really protect us.
But I was going to use it anyway if it came to that.
Now, we'd already seen this thing twice that night with our own eyes right there in
the full flashlight beam, close enough to count muscle folds and hair clumps.
I knew what was standing out there.
I knew we were dealing with a big foot, probably more than one.
And I knew we were in some trouble.
My name is Daniel.
I'm 45 years old.
I was born and raised in southern Ohio.
I'm not far from where you are, Nance, actually.
I grew up hunting deer and squirrels, fishing farm ponds all through Adams County Warren County
and Butler County.
I've been through all the creeks, been down to the rivers.
I'm comfortable in the woods, or at least I used to be.
My son, Ethan, is 15.
He spends more time on a screen than outside, and that's more my fault, I think, than his.
A divorce, longer work hours.
All the normal excuses that people have.
But this past spring, I decided I was going to fix at least a little bit of that.
I was going to get him out under some stars and out in the woods.
Show him how to build a fire.
Make some coffee on a camp stove.
Maybe let him hear some whipper whills and some owls instead of all the noise from tick-tock
videos and games.
That truth is, money's been pretty tight on me.
So we weren't going to any fancy campground with fancy hookups and shower houses.
I'd been watching some videos on disperse camping.
It's that kind of free camping that you can do on certain state or national force lands,
where you just find a spot off of a forest road, and you set up as long as you follow the
rules.
Sounded perfect to me.
Cheap, quiet, secluded, very nice.
A buddy of mine at work, Doug, told me about a particular place that he turkey hunted
along a little river about an hour from us.
He said, "There's a forest service road down there that runs right along the bluff.
You can walk a trail down to the floodplain, plenty of flat spots by the water for camping."
I asked if it was legal to camp.
He just shrugged and said, "Well, I've seen a lot of tents down there from time to time.
Rangers have been by and they never seem to say much.
Just don't leave trash.
Don't have a big bonfire.
You'll be fine."
So that became the plan.
One night, just father and son, quiet, camping down on the river.
Hopefully, lots of stars overhead, and a lot of fish biting in the river.
If I had known what that valley really held, I'd have booked a regular campground with screaming
kids and RB generators humming all night instead of where we went, and I just would ate cheaper
food that month.
But we went on a Saturday this past late May.
The river was down in its bank with some wide grapple bar showing.
The weather was perfect.
Blue sky, highs and seventies.
It was supposed to get down to around fifty at night.
That's what I call, perfect camping weather.
We loaded light, just one tent, two sleeping bags, a little propane stove, a cooler, and a couple
rods because Ethan wanted to see if he could catch a catfish at night.
He was actually excited, which made me feel like maybe I wasn't completely failing everything
as a dad.
We got to the forest road around mid-afternoon.
It turned to gravel pretty quick and followed the top up to the bluff, with the river down
below somewhere out of sight through the trees.
We passed two other trucks that were pulled off in little side spots.
Turkey hunters were my guests judging from the decals I saw on the trucks.
But nobody was there at the pull-off that Doug had told me about.
From there we hiked a narrow trail down through mixed hardwoods.
You could see where spring floods had chewed and rearranged everything far down below.
The trail dropped onto the flood plain, which on that side was a wide tongue of sand and
gravel with patches of young sycamores and willows.
The river itself curved out in front of us, slow and brown, maybe 40 yards across.
It was very pretty.
I'll give it that.
You could see old high water lines on the bigger trees, driftwood still caught some ten
feet up in the branches.
But that day it was gentle and low, braided around little islands in sand bars.
The dogs were already starting up in the shallows.
The birds were moving in the tree tops right there with the squirrels.
We found a flat spot just above the main sand bar, tucked behind a line of young sycamores,
enough of a clearing for a small fire, close enough to the water that Ethan could throw
out a line without any trouble.
"Wow, this is nice," Ethan said, dropping his pack.
I felt proud. I was so glad we'd come.
"Told you," I said, "in the whole place as ours tonight.
Just me and you."
"Well, that kind of turned out to be true and kind of not.
Both ways, in a way, we didn't want."
We spent the afternoon poking around the area, like most people do.
We went walking, we skipped rocks, we were checking for different tracks of animals,
and we found plenty.
We saw deer, raccoon, even hair in along the sand bars.
A lot of coon and possum prints all around the water's edge.
But there was nothing I saw that made me uneasy.
We set up the tent while it was still light.
It was just one of those cheap, Walmart dome tents, just fine for a night or two in good
weather, but not something you'd want to put through, even a light storm.
I staked it down, double checked the seams, and tried to look competent as Ethan watched.
About an hour before dark, I got a little fire going in a ring of stones.
Nothing big, just enough to cook some hot dogs on, and maybe roast a few marshmallows after.
Ethan rigged up his rod with some store-bought stink bait, and tossed it out to the edge
of a deeper hole, talking all about the monster catfish he was going to get.
Me, I was thinking he was more likely to get an old shoe out of there, but I loved his enthusiasm.
I was happy that he was happy, so I kept quiet.
Reader hot dogs burned a few rounds of marshmallows, then sat watching the sky go from gold
to deep purple to almost black.
About the time it was dark enough that you could see the first real stars in the sky, Ethan's
rod tip bounced.
"Dad!" he yelled and pointed.
He got up and scrambled to go grab it.
I stood up with my flashlight, ready to be the net man.
After it bit a clumsy reeling, he dragged in a decent channel cat, maybe three, three and
a half pounds.
The grin on Ethan's face made the entire trip worth it right there, as far as I was concerned.
Of course, I didn't know what was about to happen, but it was still worth it.
We admired the fish.
I took a quick picture for him, and then we let it go.
He immediately recast, all fired up to catch another.
And that's when I heard the first splash.
It wasn't Ethan's line hitting the water.
No, this came from downstream, somewhere in the dark beyond the bend of the sand bar.
It was the sound of something heavy stepping into shallow water.
And then big woosh.
And then they were all the ripples.
Then another step.
Deeper this time with more of a hollow slap underneath as if something was hitting mud
when it stepped.
I swung my flashlight that way, but the beam didn't go all that far.
All I could see was water glare, some ripples, and then the trunk of the sycamores on the far
bank.
"Probably a deer," I said, though it didn't sound like any deer I'd ever heard before.
Maybe it was just some beavers.
You think it was a gator?
Ethan asked, half teasing.
We both knew there weren't any gators here.
Well, no, not unless it hitched a ride up from the south I told him back teasing.
We watched the area for a minute, but nothing else moved.
The frogs were still making all their noise.
Ethan went back to his fishing line.
I went back to my camp chair, but my ears stayed pointed downstream.
A few minutes later we heard sound again, but this time closer.
Step, splash, slosh.
It was walking straight up the shallows along our sand bar.
My hackles were now raised.
This wasn't how a person looking to stop at your campfire would come at you, and it was
walking on only two legs.
I knew that for sure.
It sounded like maybe a big man, but whatever it was, I didn't like this at all.
I got a splash-lighten hand.
Ethan suddenly felt the change in the area and in me, and he turned.
"Dad, what is that?"
"I don't know," I said, which is not something I like to say in front of my son.
The sound stopped somewhere around where our sand bar pinched back into the main bank.
If it had been a deer, it should have stepped up on the land.
You know that sound.
Water to mud to leaves.
But I didn't hear that.
It was like it had walked right to the edge of our little pool of campfire light and stopped
right before the light would hit it.
Maybe it's out in the deeper part now, I said, but I didn't believe it.
We listened for a few more minutes.
All we could hear was the river, the frogs, and the crackling of our fire.
Then whip.
Something small and hard hit the sand, a couple of feet from our fire and rolled to a stop.
It was a rock.
A smooth river stone, roughly the size of a golf ball.
There was nowhere else it could have come from.
It didn't come from the side or above.
The rock had come from the river area.
"Okay," I said, "that's enough fishing for tonight."
Ethan did not argue.
He reeled in quick as I kicked more wood onto the fire and grabbed my bigger flashlight
from the tent.
I walked down to the water's edge, light sweeping back and forth.
Nothing.
Just dark water and sand and my own breath puffing out in little clouds.
I tried to tell myself some kid upstream had thrown that rock trying to be funny, or maybe
it slid off of a collapsing bank somehow.
But I couldn't make either explanation fit.
I had a tight feeling go across my shoulders, like I was getting ready for something
to happen.
I decided it was time to call it a night.
We put out the fishing gear, zipped up the cooler, and made a point of cleaning up anything
that might have smelled, just in case a raccoon came snooping around, I told myself.
The fire settled into a bed of coals.
I planned to let it burn down low, but not go out completely.
Before we turned in, I took the flashlight and walked a slow circle around our little
camp, then walked down the bank-aways, sweeping with the light.
Sand and gravel everywhere.
Some leaf litter under the saplings.
I didn't see any fresh tracks that I couldn't explain.
There were no boot prints beside ours.
There were no big round deer tracks heading our way.
And more than once I was sure I heard a plop, like a rock had landed in the water nearby.
I'd quickly shine my light all around, but all I ever saw were some ripples on the water.
I tried to tell myself I was just imagining it, or going back to that kid upstream somewhere.
But the last rock, it was very close, and I saw it hit the water just as it hit.
I shined my light there, and then to where I thought it had come from.
I stood still for a minute or two, but no more rocks came.
Barely I headed back, sweeping my light in wide arcs as I walked.
When I got back to our camp, I swept the beam toward the far side of the sand bar, up
where it met the woods.
And I saw something that made me stop.
About fifty yards off, just inside the first line of saplings, there were two small, golden
and brish points reflecting my light.
They were eyes.
And they were far too high for a raccoon, too narrow for a deer.
They were about the height of a grown man's eyes, where they would be.
Maybe just a tad higher, I wasn't sure about the ground over there.
But they stared at us for maybe a second or two.
When I moved the beam up slightly, they winked out as whatever had owned them turned its head
away.
"Did you see that?" Ethan whispered at my elbow.
He'd come to stand up next to me.
"And probably just a deer," I said, the line tasting flattened my mouth.
You know, they'll bed down just anywhere around here, I'm sure.
But the eyes didn't come back when I swept the light over there again.
We finally went to the tent.
Ethan slid into his sleeping bag and was just out in minutes.
You know, fifteen-year-old boys can fall asleep in a heavy rock quarry if they're tired enough.
I lay awake though a long time listening to every little thing.
For a while it was peaceful.
Frogs, the sound of the river, a barred owl off somewhere, the occasional fish slapping
at the surface.
Then bit by bit all the sound drained away.
"It's hard to explain if you've never experienced it."
One morning the night has all the normal textures, layers of sound.
Some close, some far.
Then the next.
It's as if someone draped a thick blanket over everything.
The frogs stopped first.
Then the insect buzz faded away.
Then the distant owl shut up.
The only steady sound left was the faint hiss of the river, and even that seemed quieter
too.
I slid my hand into my duffel bag and found the pistol more for comfort than out of any
real plan.
Through the tent wall I heard sand and gravel grinding and crunching.
Then step, for drag, another step, drag.
Something was walking on the dry part of the bar, not the wet near the water.
It was coming up from downstream.
The same path the splashes had taken earlier, only now on land, and coming closer.
It did not seem to be in a hurry I noticed.
The steps were too heavy and too spaced apart to be something like a raccoon or even a
human for that matter.
They stopped somewhere down near where we'd been fishing.
I could picture our two camp chairs still sitting there by the dead rods and the fire glowing
low between them.
I held my breath.
For a long moment all I heard was the faint crackling of wood-coals popping in the low
fire.
Then came a sound that I will never forget.
Fabric rustling as something pinched the corner of my folding camp chair and lifted it a couple
inches off the ground and set it back down.
The chair on the sand and the stone is a distinct sound.
I knew what it was because I had made that sound putting it out and repositioning it several
times myself earlier in the day.
Ethan rolled over just then and sort of muttered in his sleep.
I put my free hand gently on his shoulder.
Whatever was out there moved again.
It walked a slow circle around the fire pit.
I heard small stones crunch.
Once there was a stick that snapped sharply.
I heard various sounds outside, and for most of them I could match it up to something of
ours being moved or picked up.
It was inspecting our things.
I swallowed hard and eased my phone out, thinking maybe I could flip the camera on and risk a
picture if I pulled down the zipper just enough.
But the idea of that tiny rectangle of flashing light giving us away made me shove it back
down in my pack.
The footsteps moved closer to the tent then.
You never realized just how thin tent walls are until there's something really big on the
other side of it.
Our tent had that little screened window on the door and a screen panel opposite, both
could be unzipped.
The fly was down, but the glow from the coal still made a faint, orangy light outside,
enough that I could tell when something blocked that light.
A shadow fell across the door of the tent.
Big.
This was not the shape of a deer's head or some humped raccoons back.
This was tall and stood broad and straight.
You could see where it narrowed slightly at what had to be a waste, then widened again into
two big, thick legs.
I could hear it breathing.
So steady breaths coming through the nose.
It wasn't panting, just taking us in, sniffing us out, you might say.
The outline moved along the front of the tent toward my side.
When it got to about where my feet were, it stopped.
I had the insane thought that it could see through the thin nylon and see the lumps our
bodies made in the fabric of our bed rolls.
And something, probably a hand, pressed lightly against the side of the tent about where
my knees were.
I saw the material bow inward and inch or two.
I froze.
If I had lifted my leg, we would have touched.
The pressure on the tent increased just a hair, like it was testing the give of the fabric.
Then it slid it along the fabric, brushing over Ethan's sleeping bag next to me.
My son let out a soft snore oblivious to what was happening.
I don't mind telling you.
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood just to keep from saying something
out loud.
The hand or whatever it was, suddenly lifted away.
The shadow moved on, circling the tent.
I heard it stop on the backside near the trees.
Then I heard three soft taps on the trunk of the big sycamore that we'd picked as a landmark.
Knock, knock, knock.
I know you've heard a lot about these wooden nooks.
I always thought folks were just reading too much into normal, forced noises.
I no longer think that.
These weren't random limb pops I was hearing.
There was a rhythm in those nooks, and it was controlling the volume to not be too loud.
A second or two after that third knock farther out in the dark, maybe across the side channel
of the river.
I heard another knock answer it.
It was also lower, maybe more muffled by the distance.
No, we were not dealing with one.
What did the nooks signal?
What did they say?
My insides were nodding up thinking about it.
By then I was pretty sure of what was out there, but I had to know for sure.
What if I was wrong?
I decided I'd rather know than not know, even if knowing scared me even worse.
And I knew that it just might do that.
I whispered in Ethan's ear.
"Hey, buddy, wake up.
Do it slow and don't make any noise."
Ethan came awake quicker than I had expected, his eyes big in the dim darkness.
I felt him tense up under my hand.
"What?" he started to say.
I put my hand over his mouth.
"Shh, something's outside," I said.
"Listen."
We lay there in the darkness.
The steps started again, moving away from the tent toward the water where our chairs were.
It sounded like it was maybe twenty feet out from us now.
"I'm gonna take a look," I said, into his ear quietly.
Stay still.
Keep quiet.
I wriggled to sit up just enough to get my hand on the zipper of the door.
I zipped it down about an inch at a time, winsing at every middle sound, until there was a
gap big enough to poke the flashlight through.
And I'd brought a good light, one of those long aluminum ones with a strong LED.
It felt like a baseball bat in my hand.
I slid it through the opening, thumb on the switch, and counted to three in my head.
One, two, three.
I hit the button and swept the beam toward the fire pit.
The colds flared red in the sudden white light.
Our chairs glowed dull.
And just beyond them, mid-step on the dry sand, turning its head toward us, was what I had
been hearing.
I know everyone listening wants to know all the dimensions, how far away it was.
Well, I stepped it off the next day.
From our tent door to where it had been standing was maybe twenty-five feet.
That's it.
Not twenty-five yards.
Twenty-five feet.
Maximum.
It was facing a little to the side, so I saw it in three-quarter view.
The beam hit it in the chest in the throat first, lighting up hair and skin.
And man, it was tall.
Taller than any person I've ever stood next to.
I'd put it at least seven and a half feet, probably upwards of eight.
The shoulders were wide.
They were round and heavy with muscle.
The chest was broad and thick, massive.
The hair there was shorter, and I could see the bulk of the muscles underneath it clear.
Down around the stomach and the hips, the hair got a little longer and shaggyer.
Its arms hung low and long, the hands brushing its knees.
The hands themselves I saw were big, and they had long distinct fingers.
I could see where the hair thinned on the palms and around the fingers, showing darker
skin.
When the beam of light hit its face, it flinched slightly, then turned its eyes away,
but not before I saw them.
They didn't glow like headlights.
They reflected the light the same as any animal's eyes would do.
But there was a flash of intelligence in them before they turned away.
There was a thick, bony brow bone that stuck out, making the eyes seem deep and shadowed.
The nose that I saw was broad and flat, looked more human than a dog.
It didn't protrude from the face at all.
The mouth, what I could see of it, was wide, then lips pressed together.
I did not see teeth or tongue.
The hair on the cheeks and the chin were thinner around the nose and the mouth.
And if I could say it, it looked irritated.
That's the best word I've got.
It didn't seem afraid or even really angry, just kind of ticked that we were there or
maybe because I'd lit it up with light.
For maybe two heartbeat, it stood there in full view.
It's chest rising and falling, breath steaming in the night air.
Then it lifted one arm slightly, palm toward us, like a man blocking out a bright light
in his face, and he took a long stride backward.
I followed him with the beam.
It ticked two more steps, and now it was at the edge of the trees.
One step sideways behind a sapling, and it was half hidden.
Another, and it was just a darker shape among other dark shapes, constantly going further
and further away, farther than my flashlight could reach it.
I cut the light off.
Ethan's hand was clamped on my arm like a vice.
"Dad," he said, "what was that?"
I did not say the word "bigfoot," and I didn't say "monster."
I said the only thing that I could manage to think for myself.
It was something that lives here, son.
Ethan started breathing fast.
I squeezed his shoulder to reassure him.
"Hey, it's okay, we're okay.
We're in the tent.
We're not out there running to attract it, and you know, if it had wanted us, it would
have already got us.
I think it's just curious, son.
Let's just stay calm and wait it out, okay?"
He nodded, but it felt like he was shaking a little.
I wish I could tell you that after that there were no more sounds and that the bigfoot had
left.
But that wouldn't be true at all.
Before the next several hours hit, and I am pretty sure it was they at times circled around
our camp.
There were stretches of 15, 20 minutes where all we heard was the river again.
Each time I'd start to think, "Well, maybe they'd gone."
And then there'd be a knock from one side or the other, or a big splash in the side channel,
or we'd hear a heavy step out there in the sand and gravel.
And then the adrenaline would spike all over again.
At one point, maybe around two in the morning, something came in close from the backside of
the tent where the trees started.
It moved quietly.
But you can't hide that much weight.
I heard branches brush, leaves, rustle.
Then came a sound right over our heads.
A rough skin and hair kind of rubbing on the fly above.
Something big had put its hand up there and rubbed the fly tarp like it was curious.
The tent fabric sagged for a second.
Dust rained down from the seam line.
Ethan let out a tiny whimper.
The rubbing stopped.
A moment later, right at the head of my sleeping bag, something pressed down on the roof from
outside.
The wall bowed in several inches over my face.
I could see silhouetted fingers spread out through the material.
Long digits.
Far too long for any human hand.
I didn't think the tent would make it.
Suddenly the hand lifted, and I heard the creature move on.
A few seconds later, a rock hit the side of the tent with a lot of force.
If the tent nylon had been pulled tighter, it might have taken that part of the tent down.
But I had borrowed this tent from Doug, and I knew it was older.
The nylon was not pulled so tight.
It didn't put up a lot of resistance.
So when the rock hit, it pushed forward into the nylon, losing most of the momentum into
the fabric, and it then rolled down and hit the dirt.
If the rock had been bigger or thrown with more force, it might have done some damage.
I took the rock throw, like a warning.
I kept my thumb on the flashlight switch, and my other hand on my gun.
But after that first look, I didn't flip that light on again.
I'd had enough of seeing it face to face.
And to be honest, I worried that blinding it again up close might push it from being
curious to angry.
Sometime later there was a flurry of activity on the far side of the channel.
We heard big splashes in what sounded like two different sets of footsteps, one deep,
chesty grunt, and then a flurry of odd sounds that came out strung together, but I have
no description for them.
That made Ethan stiffen and he grabbed my arm again.
"Dad, they're talking," he said.
I almost said no, no, they're not.
But then I stopped and listened, and I realized he might be right.
And that idea that we were the only two humans in a valley with several of them communicating
settled in my gut, like ice.
The last close approach came closer to dawn.
And the sky outside the tent had just turned from black to a hint of deep and vivid blue.
We'd been lying there in a half-day state.
The kind of half-sleep where your brain will not shut off, but your body is absolutely
exhausted.
The fire outside was now mostly ash, with only a faint glow left.
Suddenly, right by Ethan's side of the tent, there was this rapid, heavy thump thump thump.
They were foothalls, like something had come in at a trot, and stopped hard right by the
tent.
Ethan's whole body jerked.
A large shadow fell across the side wall of his tent side.
And before I could stop him, Ethan yelled out, "Go away!"
It was silence.
Then just on the other side of that thin nylon, we heard a sound that did not belong to any
animal I know.
It was a deep, almost subsonic rumble that started in a chest somewhere and came out like
a vibrating hum.
This wasn't a growl with teeth.
It was more like a low warning.
It went on for two, three seconds, then cut off.
I don't know what it meant in their language, but in ours, well, we translated it to mean,
you're pushing your luck, buddy.
I squeezed Ethan's shoulder hard and said, "No more yelling!"
Then I whispered, "Hey, we're almost today, light.
Just hang on."
Ethan stayed there at his side of the tent just a moment longer.
I watched the shadow expand and contract with its breathing.
Then the shadow lifted away.
Steps retreated toward the water.
We didn't hear them again up close after that.
When real daylight finally filtered through the tent material, we hadn't heard from them
for over an hour.
I could now hear birds and all the regular noises of the woods at daybreak.
But by then I felt like I'd aged ten years overnight.
We stayed put another half hour after that, just to be sure.
Then I unzipped the tent door.
Cauchously looked around.
Got out and checked cautiously all around again.
When I was absolutely sure it was safe, I told Ethan to come
on out.
The camp looked like a group of drunk teenagers had been at it.
One of the folding chairs was tipped over.
The other had muddy grits smeared along an armrest where something with a big dirty hand
had gripped it.
Our cooler had been moved about a foot from where we had left it.
It was lying on its side.
Technically the lid was still attached, but the zipper had been pulled apart, as if someone
had been opening a bag of chips, pulling at the seams.
There was nothing left inside, of course.
Not that there had been much anyway, just a couple extra hot dogs.
I walked a slow circle, taking it all in.
There were tracks everywhere too.
There was nothing you could mistake for a bear, and nothing you would ever mistake for
human.
There were lots of oversteps, but here and there.
There were some clear prints left behind.
On the damp sand between our tent and the water, I found a long line of prints, each one
longer than my boot and a lot wider.
The stride was really long.
Further than I could stretch my legs, they were the cleanest prints of them all.
I had already decided what had been out there all night, even if I hadn't set it out
loud.
But if I hadn't had a clue, those clear shapes would have clinched it for me.
They were the clearest of all the prints, and there was no mistaking those big feet.
A few of the prints had toe shapes at the front, where the sand had taken them in just right,
five, with the big toe more in line with the others, more so than ours.
On the backside of the tent, near the tree line, there were scuffs and disturbed leaves
showing where something heavy had spent a lot of time.
Maybe standing, maybe sitting.
I'm not really a sign reader, so to speak, but the bark on that sycamore had three fresh
pale marks, about six and a half feet up.
Maybe from the knocking we heard.
That was my guess anyway.
Ethan walked beside me.
He was a little quiet, not acting like his usual strutting teenage self.
"Dad, we're not staying here another night, are we?" he asked.
"Nobody," I said.
"We're packing up, right now."
We took down the tent in record time, barely caring how it was folded.
We tossed everything in our packs and didn't stop to even make breakfast.
Didn't matter.
My stomach was in too much of a knot to eat anyway, and I think Ethan's was about the same.
As we walked back up the trail to the truck, we both kept looking over our shoulders.
The woods seemed normal again.
Birds, bugs, all the usual sounds.
But the whole way, I felt eyes on us.
For a couple of months I didn't tell anybody except Doug what had really happened out there.
And even with him, I left out just how scary I had felt the whole thing was, how scared I
had been.
I just said we'd had a really weird night, and something big had been walking around the
camp.
But the way I said it, it could have been a bear, it could have been anything.
And I did say I wouldn't be camping on that floodplain ever again.
When I told my ex-wife that we'd cut the trip short that weekend, I blamed it on bad weather
moving in.
She could think whatever she wanted.
I didn't care.
But Ethan knows he was there.
He's listened to a bunch of your Buckeye Bigfoot uploads with me since then, and we listen to
a lot of other channels too.
And every time a story mentions a floodplain, a river, a sand bar, or even a tent, especially
in Ohio, I see Ethan's reaction.
We tried camping again, later this summer, in a regular state park campground, you know,
with RVs and rangers and real bath houses.
Ethan made it till about 10 or 10 30 that night.
Then he quietly asked me if we could just go home and try again some other time.
I said sure little buddy.
We packed everything up.
But we haven't tried it again.
I've thought about it a lot since, and here's what I think.
I think that river bottom is theirs, or at least it's part of a route that they use regularly.
High ground for us, low ground for them.
I think we plopped our little nylon tent right there in the middle of where they come
through at night to feed in the shallows and to move between the hills.
And I think the only reason that we're here to write about it, and we're not on a missing
person's poster tacked up somewhere, is because whatever they are, they're not really looking
for a fight, unless they have to have one.
They pushed us.
They let us know we were not welcome, and we didn't come out swinging or firing at them,
but they sure scared us bad enough that we won't go back.
And from their point of view, that's a win.
From mine, it's changed how I feel about the woods in a way that I don't quite know how
to deal with.
I still do go out in daylight.
I still deer hunt.
I still fish, so does Ethan.
But I never go out alone.
When you combat, I pay more attention now to where I pitch a tent.
If there aren't at least a few other human beings around me, well I'm not sleeping out there,
I promise you that.
So that's our story, Nancy.
You can share it if you think it'll help any other dad think twice before he drags his
teenager down into some pretty isolated river bottom to "get away from it all."
Tell them, there are some places you go, and you're not getting away from anything at all.
In fact, you're going right to something.
Something you probably don't want to go right to, and it sure doesn't want you either.
And if the frogs go quiet all at once, and something starts walking in the shallows toward
their little circle of fire light, tell them they might want to be somewhere that has
more than just some nylon between them and the night, and what walks in the night.
You've been listening to The Buckeye Bigfoot podcast.
Find more stories, hundreds more, over on our YouTube channel.
Just look for Buckeye Bigfoot.