Lughnasa                                                                              Kate’s Moon

Bailey, Colorado is about 20 miles west of us on Hwy. 285. It’s an up and down, winding path with vistas of the Continental Divide and several fourteeners including Mt. Evans, the weathermaker for our neighborhood here on Shadow Mountain.

Bailey is also the first, coming from the east, town in Park County, which abuts our own Jefferson County. That’s significant because the marijuana laws here in Colorado give counties the authority to accept or include dispensaries. Jefferson County, one of Colorado’s largest, has said no for now. Park County though, said yes. Kate and I make the journey to The Happy Camper, located just outside of Bailey, every once in awhile.

I went yesterday while Kate entertained the Needleworkers at our home. On a whim, after my visit to the Happy Camper I decided to satisfy my curiosity and visit the Sasquatch Outpost. It’s in Bailey, down the steep 7% grade known as Crow Hill, about six miles from the dispensary.

While there, I spoke to some folks, a couple of employees and two men who seemed to be hanging out, sussing out the level of credulity. Turns out it’s pretty high. Voicing the expected level of uncertainty, “Could be natural phenomenon,” one man, six foot two, white haired, well spoken, showed me on his phone a photograph he’d taken on a recent research trip with some Australians. It showed an Aspen bent in a 180 degree arc and, he said, “Fastened to the ground.” This Aspen had branches leaning up against it. When they do research, he and his buddy go to places that have what he described as a high incidence of such things.

When I asked why we didn’t have more information about the Sasquatch, he replied, “We do. There’s the BigFoot Field Researchers Organization. It has over 30,000 sightings graded A, B, C. With A the most reliable, C the least.” He recounted a recent Park County incident outside Shawnee, about 8 miles further west from Bailey, up the Ben Tyler trail. “Not all that far up. There’s six switchbacks before you get into the Lost Creek Wilderness. Guy saw a bigfoot right there only three switchbacks up.”

(the archways shown here are what the guy showed me on his phone.)

It would be exciting to have a North American ape living in our mountains. I found myself enthralled by the idea that out there, living a reclusive life like the pine martens and lynx and bobcats we rarely see, is an 8 foot, bipedal creature in our own evolutionary path. But. Geez. Seems far fetched to me. Still.

Oh, and there’s also this, more Bailey culture, a bit changed from the last time I posted a photograph of it. Trump inflected, I think. The America Will Act banner is new.