For years, Rockton Mountain has been known
as a possible home for Bigfoot.
We first heard of the the possibility over a generation ago
when a Rockton woman found footprints near her pond
and, upon further investigation,
discovered some fish were missing.
She concluded that this was the work of Bigfoot.
Why?
“Those footprints were an inch deep.
My husband’s footprints are only a half inch deep
and he’s a big fella,
so the thing that made these footprints
has to be bigger than my husband.”
And so it began.
A man returning from a New Year’s Eve party
briefly saw something in his headlights.
Bigfoot?
One has to wonder what else he saw on the way home,
but that same night,
a woman who had NOT been drinking
also saw an unidentified something in her headlights.
Later, a local jogger saw an unidentified creature cross the highway.
Could it be a bigfoot?
Half-eaten roadkill?
Bigfoot.
Peculiar smell?
Bigfoot.
Damage in your garden?
You guessed it.
Bigfoot.
Even though primatologist Jane Goodall
supports the possibility
of the yet-unconfirmed ape-like creatures,
we remained skeptical.
Over the Mountain restaurant,
a mile from our house,
advertised an upcoming meeting
of The Bigfoot Society.
We smiled condescendingly when we drove by
and declined to attend.
And then the mystery invaded our lives.
At 2:20 on June 4, 2019,
we were driving down the mountain
toward the Anderson Creek bridge
when I saw the silhouette of a bent over old man
waiting to cross route 322.
Behind him was the Moshannon State Forest,
and in front of him, where he must have parked his car,
was a spring at the bottom of a very steep, rocky mountainside.
I watched him walk quickly and furtively across the highway.
It looked like he was carrying something.
I assumed he had picked up something that had blown from his vehicle—
the day before I had watched a man
retrieve an errant propane tank—
but I could not see his vehicle
as the highway curved and obscured my view.
In ten seconds we reached the spring at the bottom of the mountain,
but when we got there,
there was NO vehicle.
There was NO old man,
and there is NO WAY that a human could
climb that mountainside in ten seconds.
“Whoa!” I said.
“Whoa what?” said Denny.
“I saw an old guy cross the road
and then he just disappeared...
I can understand why some people believe in Bigfoot
because I have NO IDEA how to explain what I just saw.”
“Are you sure you didn’t see a deer?”
My vision is not what it once was,
but I know a deer when I see one.
“Deer have four legs. What I saw was on two legs, bipedal.”
I enthusiastically continued to think about
and then discard possible explanations
until Denny reminded me that it was possible to think silently,
a subtle suggestion.
When we saw friends that night,
I told them of my Bigfoot sighting.
They smiled skeptically but admitted,
if anyplace around here would have a bigfoot population,
it would be on Rockton Mountain.
Mary Kay listened attentively,
then asked, “Are you sure it wasn’t a bear?”
I assured her that the creature was walking on two legs,
but later that night, eyes wide open,
I contemplated her remark again
and padded downstairs
to enter “bear walk two legs” in a search engine.
Up came a video of a bear walking on two legs.
It. Moved. Exactly. Like. My. Bigfoot.
I phoned a friend, a retired Penn State Wildlife professor,
and asked him if a bear would walk across a highway on two legs.
“That would be highly unusual,” he responded,
“but it is possible...”
So now I think my Bigfoot sighting
was really a highly unusual bear
crossing the highway on two feet.
Two big feet.
But I could be wrong.
