Robert Michael Pyle

Where Bigfoot Walks is much more than a search for Bigfoot. It's more than a need to discover the existence of a legend. Robert Michael Pyle was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to investigate the mesmerizing myths that bring Sasquatch to life in the minds of millions. The grant basically allowed Pyle to take a leave of absence from ordinary bill-paying work (other writing) to pursue Bigfoot's legacy across the Dark Divide and beyond. In that time Pyle met a variety of individuals most of show more whom fervently believe. If you are looking for a recount of all the Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti sightings in glorious detail, Where Bigfoot Walks is not the book for you. Pyle traverses the landscapes that hold the myths but his attention is more on what he can see rather than what he cannot. His lovingly vivid descriptions of birds, plants, flowers, rivers, mountains, animals, trees and grasses are tantalizing as is his equally scornful descriptions of bike tracks, logging scars, and other man-made abuses against nature. Only a couple of times were his attention to detail distracting - I didn't need to know how many times he remarried nor did I care about his bodily functions along the trek(s). show less

My neighbor Bob Pyle wrote this book about the valley in which I live. He includes about a page describing my father. I just nabbed it back from my father's reading table, and will now have a chance to read it myself. But a quick looks yields some surprises and some happy meetings of expectations.

1. The author writes very well, and waxes poetic on leaves, packrats, rain, etc.

2. The author spends a lot of time writing about people I know, even mentioning their very names. For a nationally show more published book, I had not expected so many mentions of so many country folk.

3. His description of my father is spot on.

4. He does not disguise his opinions about politics or the environment. Living, as he does, in an area filled with logges and the offspring of loggers, he does not find a welcoming majority of environmentalists, as he might in the city (where few have much real connection to nature). He understands this, and some of the interest in his books is to witness how he handles this tension.

It is, by the way, even as an artifact of modern bookcraft, a lovely book. show less

I was really looking forward to this book and, for a while, it was quite mellow,
with lovely descriptions of birds and animals.

Yet, instead of placing Bird Prevention
Decals on his windows, he continued to predictably
picked up the fallen dead birds.

Then he described how he drowned the baby possums from a dead mother
instead of calling a Wildlife or Possum Rescue.

Hard to figure....

When naturalist Robert Pyle received a grant to study Bigfoot, he didn't mount an expedition to go hunting for the creature. Instead, he traveled to the places in the Pacific Northwest rumored to be Bigfoot's haunts, and splitting his time between talking to the locals and wandering the woods to try to get a feel for who or what Bigfoot might be, if he (it?) truly exists. The result is a lovingly detailed description of the forests around Mt. St. Helens, and a knowledgable discussion not of show more whether Bigfoot really exists, but whether the habitat could support a larger predatory omnivore like Bigfoot is reputed to be.

My favorite parts of this book were Pyle's profiles of the various big names in the Bigfoot field. He talks to serious scientists and crackpot amateurs alike, and the result is both evenhanded and entertaining. One gets the sense that Pyle would be delighted if Bigfoot does exist, but he remains ambivalent. He is not invested in Bigfoot the way the hardcore searchers he interviews are; what Pyle is invested in is the wilderness and the thrilling idea that there could be new species right in our own backyard. show less