According to the walrus, the time has come to talk of many things. I don’t know what that walrus is doing in here, nor what precisely he happens to know about one thing or another, but in this case he happens to be correct. The time has come to talk of the many things that happened on my recent visit to Washington State; that I promised to change the names to protect the living, the dead, and the cryptozoological beasts I encountered should not hinder the tale overmuch.

Last Monday night, I flew into SeaTac airport to visit one of my oldest friends, whom we shall call Person One. Person One lives on a rural compound within easy view of Mt. Rainier with her three-year-old son, Person Two; her mother, Person Three; her grandmother, Person Four; her filthy crazy uncle, Person Five; and her autistic crazy uncle, Person Six. Also wandering around the premises are Dogs One through Three (a series of interrelated pit bulls), innumerable cats, and various other creatures, such as Mosquitoes One through Infinity, that feature tangentially in the telling.

I should describe this rural compound further, and I will, but there is the matter of Person Seven to contend with first. Person Seven was spotted on Tuesday just after noon, as Person One and I were picking up Person Two from nursery school. This was the occasion of my first sunlit view of the area, surrounded by hills and scrub trees, with snowcapped Mt. Rainier looming volcanically over it all. It was also my first sunlit view of Person Seven, who crossed the road in front of the car.

There was a slight pause as it registered, then Person One asked quietly, “Did you see that?”

“It was Bigfoot,” I said. It was Bigfoot, or some other species of Furred-American, although this had not quite sunk in at that moment. Here is what we saw:

As our car descended a decline in the road, a box truck approached from the other direction, about three hundred feet ahead of us. Between the two vehicles (but much closer to the truck, against which it was silhouetted for a moment), a humanoid creature, seemingly between five and six feet tall, ran across the road. It was covered in relatively short fur of one solid color, a dark grayish-brown, and did not appear to be wearing clothing. Person Seven emerged from nowhere on the left side of the country road, from our point of view, and disappeared behind a tree on the right side about three seconds later.

I wish I hadn’t been so stunned by this appearance that I forgot about the approaching truck. As the creature was much closer to it, observing the driver’s behavior in its wake would have been informative. I’m not even sure if the truck slowed down (I know it didn’t stop) because Person One and I were so intent on figuring out what we had seen. “It was Bigfoot,” I said again. There was no disagreement. Person Seven had vanished behind a tree, but it was one of only two trees in a field. A driveway cut between them, and a house stood about 1000 feet back from the road. There were livestock pastures to the left of the driveway, and the grass everywhere was long. Coming abreast of the trees, we could see nothing and nobody . . . even if it had been a regular person or some other animal (as Person Five suggested later), it would have had to have been visible just a second after crossing the road, but it wasn’t. The low branches of the trees were scanty and we didn’t see anything behind the trunks. My current thought is that it dove into the long grass and hid, but that is mere speculation after the fact. In truth, I don’t know anything more than what I have related in writing here and, moments after our return to the compound, audibly to Person Five, who was loitering in the driveway. Person One corroborates all of these details, but I must disclose fully: at the time, I was transitioning off two very strong anti-anxiety medications. Most likely, this fact also colors my perception of subsequent events, however it is significant that a Bigfoot sighting, real or imaginary, is still one of the least bizarre things that happened to me last week.

I wonder what the walrus would have to say about that.