Do I Believe in Bigfoot, or Bin Laden?

Okay, I haven't seen him either, but as such, I can now speak on equal `foot'ing with the majority of us. I do (however?) have a close relative, who, though he does not believe (in Bigfoot), has only a far shakier explanation for his own encounter, than the possibility of a larger-than-human being that lurks in our country's forests. And I have a number of friends who know directly people that have had (direct) encounters(with Bigfoot), and it is because of the respect for these friends, and their respect for their friends, that I have embraced the question myself. Does Bigfoot exist?

So my journey in answering the question myself starts in Western Washington. Western Washington is amazing. The forests are amazing. A great number of sightings of Bigfoot over the years have occurred in the great forests of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. On a vacation a number of years back we drove through some of the forests, and along the roads, in and from which people have reported `sightings' of Bigfoot. And as we drove by, and on a few occasions entered only a few feet into, the marvelous (thick, dark, dense, nearly impenetrable) forests, it hit me. “I am an avid outdoorsman. I could spend a lifetime first somehow penetrating, and then somehow wandering around in these forests, and (or but), in so doing, would never be able to conclude that something (or someone) is NOT in there. I mean - how could I? ... I have only scratched the surface.”

And especially if it knew it was hunted, and wanted to hide, and indeed had far more experience (hiding) there, than I had (just visiting).

Then my journey took me to a place not far from where I live in Idaho of a `sighting'. And I could almost imagine it ... the road embankment the creatures climbed (there was a big one and a little one), the hill that the viewers were on, the tall grass, etc. May be.

Then I started reading. Reading. Reading. It became for a short time an obsession. It was fascinating. Several hundred first hand (eye-witness) descriptions of encounters. And also some of the film footage, and photographs, newspaper articles, and so on. And to me, anyway, the picture became stronger and stronger, that something of which I would have only months or years earlier been quite skeptical of, may really exist. And I read further to find that for our Native American brethren, here before us, and for which I am gaining greater and greater respect, ... for them there was no question.

And so I arrive at the place in my journey where, first of all, I will NOT hunt those hundreds of people down, who, many reluctantly, shared their experiences, and tell them they didn't see, hear, and smell what they say they did see, hear, and smelled. (And nor am I going to correct Native Americans on their history and lore.) And I reckon on the fact that while I have spent TONS of time in the outdoors, and in some of the wildest of the wildest places, there are still things I haven't seen ... I arrive at the following place, and it is a question, of sorts: THERE HAVE BEEN FAR MORE SIGHTINGS OF BIGFOOT IN THE PAST SEVEN YEARS, THAN OF BIN-LADEN, and yet we take for granted (the existence of) Bin Laden. (And the greatest military and intelligence machines in the world are looking for Bin Laden.) Sure some of the sightings, photos, footage, are questionable, grainy, obscure, maybe even hoaxes (and some quite recently). Maybe a lot of the photos are hoaxes, made up, a man in a Bigfoot suit? Maybe some of the eye-witness `sightings' are connived?

But what if even ONE isn't?