Peter Matthiessen & Bigfoot

From Jeff Wheelwright's 7-1-19 LITHUB article entitled "On Peter Matthiessen’s Lifelong Fascination with Bigfoot":

In September 1976, Peter Matthiessen took me aside at a family wedding in Seattle. He was 49 and at the acme of his ambidextrous literary powers. Far Tortuga, his finest novel, about a doomed voyage of turtle hunters, had been published the year before, and his next book, set in the Himalayas, would be The Snow Leopard, his finest work of nonfiction.

I had mentioned to Peter that my wife and I were headed for Vancouver, B.C., on a short vacation. Looking at me meaningfully, my uncle said that while we were in Vancouver we should go to a private screening of a film that he would arrange for us. The brief footage, he explained, showed a sasquatch or what was believed to be a sasquatch walking in the woods of northern California.

I was surprised, for I had no inkling of his interest in Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot: the large, hairy, hominoid creature reputed by some not very reputable people to lurk in the forests of the Northwest. Sensitive to scoffers, Peter had told almost no one about his fascination with Bigfoot. Indeed, he could have told me, but did not, that earlier in the summer, while driving in the backcountry investigating reports of Bigfoot, he’d seen a tall, bipedal figure run across the road and disappear into the trees. 

To read Wheelwright's entire article, click HERE. 

And to read more about Peter Matthiessen's personal library of Bigfoot books, click HERE.