"My name is Luke. My job as a surveyor takes me into all kinds of places. This happened
to me and my crew in the Allegheny foothills in Pennsylvania. The job is simple on paper.
You close a gap between two old corners that don't agree anymore. Now that happens more
often than you would think. Deeds copied from old deeds that were copied from even older
deeds. And old landmark trees are now gone derot and you can't find them. And those old
iron pens that were good enough when everyone shook hands on them. Well, you can't find
those because they're mostly rusted to dust. So you go out, you cut a line, and you run
a shot, and you make everything line up to bring the corners together, at least on the
map. That was the plan. That day it was me, Cody, and the new kid, Ethan. I've been out
on crews for a decade or more. It's long enough to know what kind of day you're going
to have just by the way the dew burns off the grass. This day started cool and bright.
The sun was clean overhead, but on the ground you wouldn't know it. The brush there was
a shoulder high and stitched up tight. A green ceiling, ten feet up of heavy brush, most
of it laurel. Now when you're in that kind of dense brush, the morning looks and feels
more like late afternoon with what little light that you get through. And the sounds there?
They're hard to pinpoint. We parked the trucks off a logging spur,
shouldered up our gear and went in single file. Cody had the tripod and total station. I
had the prism rod and lathe. Eden with a ribbon and a handful of brush takes. Now the line
we were cutting ran northeast to southwest. The bearings from the office were good. We just
needed to lay them in the dirt and make the two old corners meet up in the middle. Now
you don't think about wildlife when you're out in the bush on the job. At least I don't.
I do think about Hornets, ticks, and hidden holes. Unfortunately I have been the repeated
victim of all of those many times before. Bears are around, sure, as are hogs. But you
usually hear them before you see them. Experiences taught me if I hear something that could
be either of those, I back up, I give up the ground. And I try to keep as much distance
as I can between them and me. And if I can't do that, I try to keep the biggest tree
I can find between me and them. And I hope it doesn't notice me. By 9 that morning we'd
cut 50, 60 yards of line. Enough for Cody to throw some clean shots. We had a light wind
in the tulip poplars around us. But where we stood, the air stayed damp and green smelling
and very still. You know that smell is the smell of work to me. Crushed green from the cuts
we've made. Leaf litter bruised and crunched under our boots. And a little bit of dirt
that's floating in the air. That somehow gets in your mouth and your nostrils.
Twice that morning we heard what I called nox. I said it that way too, real casual. Hey,
Cody, your woodpeckers trying out something new today. Cody just snorted. And in case you're
wondering, that was a weird inside joke for all of us. And I'm not going to explain that
one. Anyway, what I heard was not the sound of branches falling. What we heard were two
clean hits with a pause in between. It was the sound of hardwood on hardwood. Far to our
left the first time. Farther left the second. Sort of like a heavily delayed echo. We didn't
stop what we were doing, because we don't get paid to listen to things out there. We're
paid to make the numbers agree on maps. Around noon we stretched the line another 40 feet.
I said a lath. Drove it with three taps. Wood on wood. Then flagged it bright enough
that a blind deer could have followed it. Cody called out. "Hold!" from the station.
I lifted the prism rod, moved it just a whisker. Listen for the tone and locked it in. See,
I like that part. Bring the world into alignment. Watching all the numbers settle.
Now, that's when Ethan put a hand on my sleeve. Ethan wasn't some jumpy kid, but he did have
that fresh higher earnestness, you know, the kind that makes you careful with what you say.
So you're not the one responsible for corrupting him and teaching him bad ways. Or so our
boss says. Ethan looked at me and nodded to the left and he said, "Hey, you hear that?
At first I heard only the leaves shaking high in the trees from the breeze." Then I caught it.
A forceful movement in the wall of brush, twenty yards to the left, and followed by another,
closer to our right. It wasn't the leaf flutter that you get when a gust plays with the trees or
bushes. This was a forceful sound of brush and branches being moved with deliberate carefulness.
"Bear?" Ethan whispered. "I shook my head no." "Nah, if it is, it's got a brother with him."
I told Cody, "Hold your shot." And he gave me one soft whistle. That was our copy, signal.
The tripod creaked as he shifted his stance. The green wall went silent, and all movement back
there stopped. "Hello?" I called out. "Not because I expected an answer back, but I've learned
a human voice is sometimes a really good deterrent for any creature out in the wild. They do not like
us, and I think it's with good reason." From the left flank came a single sound, it's hard to describe.
Not a chirp, not a Twitter, and it wasn't a growl or some kind of humming noise. I really can't
find a word for it. It was garbled and fast, but it didn't sound like speech or any type of communication
that I recognized. While I'm thinking about that, about three seconds after that, from the right,
came an answering sound, much like the other one. And then straight ahead, the green of brushwall
parted. When it stepped out from the brush right into our cut line, I suddenly felt like a very small
person. Now I'm not going to trot out my heightened weight like they're big deals, but I have never been
accused of being small. And I have to say in my whole life, not too many people have ever tried to
pick a fight with me in a bar, ever. Now if you're thinking I saw some guy in a suit that was playing a
prank on me, you are absolutely dead wrong. I'll tell you why. Suits have seams in their baggy where
they should be solid. Fur, even in the best suits, doesn't lay with a natural pattern. It will lay
away from the seam, usually in a haphazard fashion. What I saw was a solid body. It was definitely a real
body with eyes that were looking at me, and that face was no mask. Now over the years, I've seen some
great Halloween costumes. I've seen Chubacca. I've seen Bigfoot. I've seen people trying to be bears and
all sorts of things. But I'll tell you this. How on earth anyone could see any kind of a costume
and broad daylight and ever be fooled into thinking it's a real thing such as Bigfoot or even a bear
is beyond me. What I saw had a chest that was wide and solid, and the belly in the torso was firm and
muscled. You could see that even with all the hair. The arms on it were long enough they hung past the
mid-thigh. The hair had a deep brown base with some rusty red in it, and some of the hair around
the top of the head looked almost blonde like the sun had bleached it out. The head was tilted forward
just a little. Chin tucked, brows sticking out over the eyes like some big sun visor. I saw the
eyes. They did a small circuit around looking. First at me, then Ethan, then passed us toward Cody,
and it never moved the head hardly at all. Just the eyes. It stood 15, maybe 20 feet down the line,
just inside the cut where the lights landed in across where it stood. There was enough light that
I saw the skin where the hair was thin along the cheekbones. It was a seasoned chalky, deep brown
smoother around the eye sockets, rougher toward the jaw. The nose was wide, and it had a bridge that
you could see. The mouth line was wide and set. The lips just a shade lighter than the surrounding
skin. It breathed in through the nose. I saw the ribs lift under the hair, and the exact same rhythm
as a man, just deeper and longer. The smell that came after. It was earthy and wet leaves with a rank
note like musty old wood chest that had been pulled out of a damp basement. It was a strong smell.
It was the kind that stole your breath. Ethan's hand found the handle of his hammer. I heard him
whispered just a single word, and it's not one I can repeat. Me, I heard my own heartbeat in my ears.
The big foot or whatever your favorite pet name for something like this is, looked at the
lathe in the ground that I had just placed. It walked forward a full step, slow and deliberate.
I took a step back as did the other guys. Even with three of us, we knew if it came to a fight,
we would not win, whether we had hammers and other tools or not. It came forward just that step,
took another half step, then lowered itself with a small bend at the knees, right in front of the
lathe. It reached out with two fingers and one of its huge thumbs and plucked the stake out of the
ground and tossed it aside, keeping eye contact with me as it did so. Point made. My mouth worked before
my brain did. Hey buddy, we're gonna move the line, okay? I said that and don't ask me why I said it.
It was like I thought maybe it would understand me, but I know it wouldn't. So don't ask me because
I can't tell you why I did. After I said that, it lifted its chin just a fraction, pressed its lips out
and blew out a small puff. It wasn't a spit exactly. Not exactly a whistle either. It was just a puff of
air. From the right flank came two more of those odd sounds like we heard earlier. They were low and
spaced. As for me, I'd seen and heard enough, time to go. Back out, I said to my crew. Back out,
nice and easy. I left the prism rod upright where it was and I didn't bend to pick it up. I wasn't
going to drop my head and break sight line with what I was looking at and I wasn't going to turn my
back on it either. So I took a half step backward and then another. As I did so, the thing took a half
step forward. Not enough to close the distance and it wasn't minising or threatening, but it was
just enough to show me it could close the distance and it could be threatening and minising if it wanted.
I saw the muscles in the thighs roll under the hair as it moved. When its foot sat down,
the leaf litter was compressed into a broad oval. We eased out back along our own cut.
Cody broke the station down at a speed that I'd never seen before. He folded the tripod legs and
kept the whole triangle between him and the line while walking backward like a man carrying
expensive sheet glass. At about 30 feet of our retreat, my courage tried to rear its head and told
me to stop backing out. But then the smarter side of me took over and I kept backing out. We gave the
ground back to it as we retreated and no way it didn't think about it just like that. It knew what
we were doing. I saw its eyes and expression. It seemed satisfied that we were backing up and try
umpthent. We backed up all the way to the beginning of our cut and all the while it gave us a hard
lingering stare. It sort of felt like it was telling us to get out and stay out. It gave us that look,
then it took a long step and then another and it side stepped into the brush where it had first come
out. Then we heard it, working its way away from us. Just as the sound of it walking and moving
branches had faded away, the sound of the others in the brush nearby also moved away. I had almost
forgotten about them, perhaps because we never saw them. We continued backing up all the way out of
there. At the trucks, we didn't speak for a few minutes. Ethan sat on the tailgate, staring at his
hands like all the answers were written there, like the way he cheated on his ninth grade test.
I chugged a semi-warm gatorade just to get rid of the dry, thick feeling that my tongue and mouth
had suddenly acquired. Cody stood there and stared at the tree line as I drank my gatorade.
Then he said, "We going back for your rod?" "Yes, we are," I said. "A beat longer than it should have
taken someone who was supposed to be the group lead. We're going to wait for ten, then we'll go
in slow and get it." So we waited. I watched the shadows on the cut line. After more like 20 minutes,
we finally went back in with the tripod out front, moving as silently as we could.
The prison rod lay where I had left it, reflect or face down in the duff. When I picked it up,
there was a smudge at the top edge of the reflector. It could have been my thumb from earlier.
It could have been brush-sap. The smudge was oval and higher than my usual grip,
but I didn't make any more of it than that. I was already thinking of too much at once, right then.
Four yards off the line at shoulder height. There were the markings of the entrance and the exit
of the creature, twisted and bent limbs, but not hard-broken brush. On the ground was a run of long,
deep impressions that overlapped on each other so much that they could have been prints from anything,
except we knew what had made them. There were a few clear, oval depressions that were clearer
than the rest. They were spaced long enough that you have to stretch hard to stand one foot in one
and the other foot in the other. We all three tried, and none of us could comfortably do it or hold
that position that long. It was halfway to doing the splits, and none of us men were made for that.
I measured heel to heel, and the average was almost sixty inches apart.
We bent the line twenty feet west to avoid the area that we had been going in.
We didn't know if it would be enough of a deviation, but we had to do something. We had to get through
there and we had to finish this job. I already knew in my head the paperwork would say something like
"Field fit due to extreme vegetation obstacles and terrain." I could have dressed it up with a
paragraph about practical access and slope, and none of it would necessarily be a lie.
The main truth was this, something didn't want us to take the straight shot.
So we moved. We were trying to be respectful. We worked the rest of the afternoon with a layer
of silence under our normal talk. Ethan asked no questions, and he earned my respect for that.
Once, maybe an hour after the siding, we heard a single distant knock to the north,
but nothing answered. Once a squirrel tried to scare at least a decade off my life,
it darted out across the cut, exploding leaf litter at my feet as it did so.
Every time the wind gusted, we three froze and listened, making sure the flutter of leaves wasn't
hiding something coming toward us. On the way out near where the cut met the logging spur,
something threw a small branch into the line from twenty feet off. It wasn't hard or close.
It hit a tripod leg with a tick and then fell. If you'd asked me before lunch whether a throne
stick could make my mouth go dry, I would have laughed, but I wasn't laughing then. I yelled out,
"We're clear!" and I kept the crew moving. I would not look to where the stick had been thrown from.
I did not want to see. Back at the shop, I wrote the field notes clean and careful.
The real story was left out, of course. What I did do was talk to Ethan the next morning before
we rolled out. "Hey, you ever feel weird like that again? Or you hear something that just doesn't
seem right while we're out there?" You say it out loud. We'll back out first, talk about it later.
No questions at the time. He nodded hard enough that I thought his cap would fall off.
Two days later, we had to tie in the West Offset with a short cross line. We went in early with
low light and colder temperatures. Nothing was moving out there but us. We set the cross, we shot it,
and we got out. Now, I never told the game-morden. I didn't call a biologist. A lot of people will say
that I should have. And maybe I should have. I don't know. But I didn't feel the need.
I was not alone when this happened, so I have no doubts about that day what I experienced or what I saw.
I do not need science to tell me what I already know. I don't need everyone else in the county
knowing and possibly jeopardizing my job. So if you need a word for it, I'll do the best I can and I
will describe it for you. If you need to find the best fitting word for it, well, maybe this will help
you. To me, it was Bigfoot. Here's what I can tell you. It was a hair-covered biped, taller than
any man that I've ever stood next to. It was built a little more like a muscular runner, more so than a
big bear. It had a face that you could read expressions from. It looked at my crew the way an old man
looks at kids running on his perfect lawn. It had strong hands with the poseable thumbs.
It didn't really want us hurt, but it also didn't want us where we were or where we were going.
So we've been our cut line and I'll go to my grave believing that was the correct professional decision.
I've had folks ask what scared me the most that day. I can tell you, it wasn't the size,
and it wasn't even that nasty smell. It was the suddenness of it all, if I had to say.
It was being smacked in the face with something that I never thought was even real.
To a guy like me who lives his whole life in quantities, arcs, measurements, degrees, numbers,
and solid things that you cannot argue with, the suddenness of something that shouldn't have been
there was what was scary. We finished the corridor the next week and our client was happy with the
as built. If they walk the line in five or ten years, they'll see that twenty-foot bow,
and they're going to think it must have gone around a huge clump of massive trees or something that
is suddenly no longer there. And I guess that's kind of true though, isn't it? We did have to go
around something. So why did it react like that? And why was twenty feet of an arc enough of a deviation?
Look, I don't have any solid answers. I've got some firm guesses. I think maybe we were
heading straight for its home. It's nested. Maybe that twenty feet deviation carried us just far
enough away on the cut that we bypassed it completely by the time we came back to the line for the
straight cut. I think it reacted the same as any of us would if we woke up and found out someone was
bulldozing straight through to our house. You would go out, confront them. Do anything you could to
stop them. Tell them to move it on down the way to somewhere else. Whatever you had to do, but you
had to stop them. Now that's just a guess, but it's the firmest one I've got yet. I still work,
still doing the same thing. I still go into the thick, heavy brush, but I talk more, not less while I'm
out there. I tell Cody where I'm stepping before I step. I call out back out sooner than I normally
would have five years ago, even if all I'm hearing is wind on the leaves. I'd rather be safe than sorry.
So that's the whole of it. Thank you for listening. Luke.