Book review by Linda Martin – © 2009

Reading group homepage for this book: Tribal Bigfoot

Re: Chapter Five of Tribal Bigfoot, “Santa Cruz County”:

I read chapter five of Tribal Bigfoot about a week ago. The part that stayed with me, that I couldn’t stop thinking about, is a report on a Bigfoot who was ridgewalking in a wooded area on the county line between Monterey County and Santa Cruz County when he came upon a group of campers. That’s when Kenny Rogers, who was still awake, heard heavy footfalls approaching. Then the Bigfoot stopped and let out a loud howl. This didn’t awaken Kenny’s friends, who had been drinking earlier in the evening.

According to David Paulides’ report on this Bigfoot sighting, “The creature then stepped over to a small grouping of large trees and started to shake them very violently.” (Pg. 122) After that the creature walked around the perimeter of the group for about an hour before leaving.

Does anyone ever stop and think about things from the Sasquatch point of view? I can imagine what was going through this poor Bigfoot’s mind. He was walking along a wooded ridge he was probably accustomed to using as a corridor to reach Monterey Bay, or some other area he needed to get to, and suddenly discovered a large group of sleeping human beings in his path.

Perhaps that wouldn’t have been such an emotionally charged event for him were it not for the fact that there’s limited forested land in that area, and humans have encroached on Bigfoot territory for generations, taking more and more away from them. Maybe this ridge was his home, or his favorite place in the world. So he walked up and saw all these humans taking even more land from him — perhaps even a corridor of wooded land that he felt vital to his well-being, and it traumatized him to the point where he had to howl his fright and displeasure, then take out his extreme emotions on some trees! Finally he calmed himself down and inspected the site, perhaps wondering if this would become another permanent settlement violating land he thought was his.

The woods east and north of Santa Cruz are filled with redwood trees, homes, streets, people, and traffic, yet there are many areas where Bigfoot could be living, and in fact, many have seen evidence or had direct sightings. This chapter of the book examines several of them including Colette Alexander’s sighting which was posted to this blog in October 2008: Santa Cruz, California Bigfoot Sighting, 1999. That one tends to amaze me still because it took place right outside the city of Santa Cruz.

There are other compelling Santa Cruz County Bigfoot sighting reports in the book. Several young men there had clear sightings of a hair-covered Bigfoot close up.

I’ve spent some time in that forest, having vacationed there as a youth and returned many times during my adult years. My mother grew up in Santa Cruz, I lived there years ago in the early seventies, and my brother lives in the woods there now. The forest as seen from Highway 9 can be dark and spooky, and there are many square miles of undeveloped wooded land.

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Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter One: “Historical Bigfoot”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Two: “The Bigfoot Map Project”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Three: “Associations”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Four: “Extreme Sighting Locations”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Five: “Santa Cruz County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Six: “Amador County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Seven: “Trinity County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Eight: “Siskiyou County”
Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Nine: “Del Norte County”

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• Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Six: “Amador County”
• Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Four: “Extreme Sighting Locations”
• Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Two: “The Bigfoot Map Project”
• Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter Three: “Associations”
• Tribal Bigfoot – Comments on Chapter One: “Historical Bigfoot”