PART 2: He Fed Bigfoot for 40 Years, Then He Learned Why It Fears Us – Sasquatch Story

🌲 The Unsettled Score: Thomas McKenna’s Reckoning

The years that followed Old Jack’s final farewell were the emptiest of my life. I retired in 2016, not because I was tired, but because the forest had become a hollow shell of its former self. Every shadow, every distant snap of a twig, was a ghost of a memory. The apples I left on the stump were always gone, yes, but I knew those apples were simply disappearing into the local wildlife, or maybe a curious hiker. Old Jack and his family were gone. They had to be.

My secret, however, was not silent.

The Whisper Campaign and the Official Lie

The note left in my cabin that foggy morning—”Don’t go back there”—had been more than a warning; it was a promise of surveillance. I suspected the hunters, but the heavy, deliberate handwriting felt too formal, too official.

In the final years of my service, the atmosphere in the Gifford Pinchot shifted. The “bigfoot enthusiasts” became militant. Bill Henderson, my old supervisor, was long gone, replaced by a new breed of administrator—young, suit-wearing, and obsessed with “data-driven” forest management. They dismissed every Sasquatch sighting as a misidentified bear or a hallucination born of loneliness, yet the resources devoted to “search and rescue” operations in the remotest corners of the park seemed disproportionately high.

Then came the new policy: a massive expansion of logging operations in the exact tracts of old-growth forest that Old Jack had called home. I fought it, citing ecological concerns and the proven importance of these watersheds. They called me sentimental. I knew they were sanitizing the evidence, tearing down the sanctuary. The hypocrisy was a bitter taste in my mouth: preach conservation while authorizing environmental vandalism to destroy the evidence of a sentient species.

The Face of the Cover-Up

The confrontation came in the summer of 2018. I was living in a small, isolated cabin near the edge of the forest, writing my memoirs—a veiled account of my life with Old Jack, disguised as fiction. A black SUV pulled up my gravel drive, and out stepped a man in a crisp, non-uniform suit. He introduced himself as Agent Reynolds, not from the Forest Service, but from an unnamed, vaguely-defined “Federal Resource Protection Agency.”

Reynolds was everything I despised: smooth, devoid of genuine connection to the land, and carrying the cold authority of bureaucracy. He spoke of “national security,” “preserving public order,” and the “catastrophic socio-economic impact” of proving the existence of a reclusive, hominid species.

“Mr. McKenna,” he said, his voice flat, “we know about the animal you called ‘Old Jack.’ We know you facilitated his survival, and we know you have evidence.”

The terrible revelation was not that they knew, but that they had always known. Bill Henderson’s early advice to keep things quiet wasn’t just old ranger wisdom; it was instruction. The official-looking figures Old Jack described taking away the bodies in 2003 weren’t a cover-up after the fact; they were part of a deep, systematic policy of suppression and occasional, brutal elimination.

The hypocrisy of the state—that ultimate protector of the wilderness—actively participating in what Old Jack had rightly feared as a genocide, was staggering. It wasn’t hunters acting in isolation; it was a quiet, sanctioned campaign of denial, driven by the fear that acknowledging a competing sentient species would challenge humanity’s self-proclaimed dominion.

The Duty to Break Silence

Reynolds offered me a deal: a comfortable life, a generous non-disclosure agreement, and “peaceful anonymity” in exchange for every piece of data, every sketch, and every rock Old Jack had ever given me. He was asking me to sell my soul and betray the sacred trust I had established.

“You’re wrong,” I said, standing my ground. “The catastrophic impact isn’t the truth getting out. It’s what you people have done to keep it hidden. You’ve proven Old Jack’s every single fear correct: that we are a species of relentless violence, willing to extinguish anything that complicates our narrative.”

I gave him nothing. Reynolds left with a thinly veiled threat about the volatility of old log cabins and the sudden appearance of unexpected ‘accidents.’

That encounter clarified my duty. Old Jack had passed the torch of memory to me; I could not let the official lie stand. I finally understood the full, heartbreaking truth of their fear: they don’t fear our strength—they fear our utter lack of moral restraint. They fear the casual, bureaucratic cruelty that defines our species, the kind that destroys a forest and its inhabitants just to maintain a convenient political narrative.

My final act as a ranger, as a man, was to publish my memoir—not as veiled fiction, but as an indictment. The document, detailing forty years of feeding, protecting, and communicating with a sentient being the state wished to erase, is now circulating among a dedicated, small group of academics and environmental activists. I have provided the evidence I kept hidden: the stone tools, the detailed prints, the photos of Old Jack’s scars, and the location of the logging sites that mark the graves of his kind.

I live in the shadows now, but I sleep soundly. The apples are still gone by morning, but now, I leave them not for Old Jack, but for the world. They are a sign that a debt is owed, and a truth, once buried, can never be silenced by a handful of cold men in suits. The price of their trust was my lifelong loyalty, and I have paid it in full.