John Heron Project

As cryptozoological entities go, the Sasquatch — or “Bigfoot” if you really must — is actually a pretty straightforward sort of a fella.

I know this. Because the Sasquatch inhabits the spare room in my house.

Nearly everyone knows about the Sasquatch. A large, hairy hominid, he originally came from the Pacific Northwest of the United States. I can imagine him there, strolling in that way he does through the dappled sunlight that filters through the pines of the Cascade mountains.

It wasn’t an ideal life for him. Back in the 1960s, a couple of backwoods chancers in Northern California happened to take some Super 8 of his great-aunt Eloise awkwardly crossing a river while nursing a massive hangover, the day after a cousin’s wedding down there. The family scandal was pretty bad, but worse was the flood of monster hunters who have ranged all down the Pacific coast ever since. The Sasquatch’s family ended up having to homeschool. I imagine that it got pretty lonely for them after a while.

But there was this one time when the Sasquatch stumbled upon a group of hipster kids from Seattle on a camping trip. They took one look at him and abandoned their campsite before he could even say, Hey, guys! Something smells good. He sat down on an abandoned bedroll, absently munching at a half-eaten ham and cheese sandwich one of them had left behind, and saw, lying on the ground… well, he wasn’t sure. He’d never been shown a personal stereo before. But the Sasquatch is pretty smart as legendary ape-men go (much smarter than the Yeti, anyway. He’s a right dullard). With a bit of what does this button do and a little where do I put these, he suddenly found himself listening to the opening chords of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

I suppose that was when things changed. Screw this, he thought. I’m moving to Seattle. It wasn’t long before he was at college. He developed an aptitude for poetry. He started hosting gigs in the basement of his shared house. And then he decided to travel further afield still. And now he is here.

It turns out that the Sasquatch is not all that bad a housemate. Yes, we get the occasional odd smell in the bathroom. We’ve been woken up in the small hours by the sounds of smashing glassware. We have more than once found the vacuum cleaner clogged up by the leavings of a large, hairy hominid. Things vanish in the forest of his room.

But I am glad he is here. He’s fun to have around. My kids love him. Drawings of happy smiling children holding hands with friendly hairy monsters adorn our hallway (and have led to a few funny looks from my son’s nursery teacher, I can tell you). I like Sasquatch humour — you learn to be drily amusing when your best childhood friends are two raccoons and a beaver. Sasquatch wisdom is earthy, grown up and honest.

And he has that trait that I most admire in Americans: that inability to accept that something cannot be done until you have tried it yourself; that refusal to allow that something cannot be until you have seen it for yourself. More than that, he inspires it in other people. How can it be otherwise? He is here. He exists. What else might be true?

People around here like the Sasquatch. Yeah, there’s an initial disconnect — you’re not from round here, are you? You’ve got a funny accent. Christ, you’re hairy — but it doesn’t take much for him to get people at their ease.

I like to think of him as a friend. Simply by being here, he has changed things. He makes things happen. Our home is filled with a friendly, hairy presence. And when he is gone, and he will soon, because legends have to move on some time, we will do out best to keep on believing that he exists.

Afterword: Some time in the next eight to ten weeks, my friend, housemate and colleague Graham Isaac will be required to leave our country and return to his original home in the US. We’ll miss him. I sprang this piece on him tonight at the Crunch, the open-mic night Graham initiated with Adam Sillman at local bar Mozart’s.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 11:20 pm and is filed under America, Bite-size serials, Fragments, Occult Kitsch, Only Not Actually On Sunday, People, Sunday Poetry, TTDMMATBAC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.