Southern Maryland is ‘a hotbed of Bigfoot activity’
My daughter likes to foist that silly riddle upon her unsuspecting friends.
They don’t know that she’s one of Bigfoot’s more ardent believers this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.
She’s been squatchin’ all over the country. She’s searched among the Redwoods, through Yellowstone, Northern Arizona and even in Big Sky country on daddy-daughter trips. So, when her 13th birthday was approaching and I asked her what kind of party she might enjoy, I wasn’t too surprised that her answer was a Bigfoot party.
And just what should a Bigfoot party entail? Our thoughts were that it would be outside and she’d invite all her friends, share some stories and venture forth in the night to find evidence of the elusive Bigfoot.
You might not know much about squatchin’ if you haven’t seen Animal Planet’s hit television show “Finding Bigfoot.”
The show was canceled by the way, but you can still watch all nine seasons on Netflix. Spoiler alert: Not that you were even wondering about the outcome, but for some reason, even after having nine seasons to find some evidence, they never actually manage to find Bigfoot.
My daughter and I don’t share the same faith in the supernatural. My thought is, anything is possible, but with the advent and proliferation of trail cams, someone should have recorded a Bigfoot by now.
However, their lack of success never deterred millions of people from tuning in each week to watch the cast do their thing. Bobo, Cliff, Matt and Ranae trek through the woods in the day and at night with acoustic listening devices and thermal imagers while they hoot and holler out their best Sasquatch calls. That pretty much sums up our approach to finding Bigfoot right here in Southern Maryland.
I still felt a little out of my element planning this party, so I turned to Matt Moneymaker, one of the cast members of the show who also heads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization to find someone in the area to lead us on an investigation here in Southern Maryland.
Moneymaker was surprisingly easy to contact and helpful. He came through with a local expert named Gudrun (she asked me not to use her last name) who lives in Northern Virginia but travels frequently to more rural areas like ours to investigate Bigfoot sightings.
Gudrun told me Southern Maryland is “a hotbed of Bigfoot activity,” and while January typically isn’t a good time of year to find signs of Bigfoot, a clear, calm night might just turn up something squatchy.
Of course, the first date for the party was on a cold January weekend with snow and freezing rain, but luckily we
planned a snow date just in case. The next Saturday night turned out to be a perfect evening for squatchin’ — not a lot of wind, not a full moon and no precipitation.
It was cold, about 30-degrees that night, but the right kind of winter coat (not one that makes
a lot of swishy sounds, either, since you don’t want to scare off Bigfoot), thick socks, a trapper hat and warm gloves made spending several hours outside enjoyable.
My youngest, just a mere 8 months old at the time, was a trooper the entire evening, decked out in a highly-rated bunting that kept her toasty from head to toe. The two boxes of Hot Hands we
provided for everyone helped, too.
We convened at Sotterley Plantation just as it was getting dark, gathering round a fire pit near the water’s edge where the Boy Scouts occasionally make camp. We started off the evening in style, roasting hotdogs over a warm bonfire and sipping hot chocolate. When the night sky darkened to Gudrun’s liking, we set off on a hike through the woods and fields.
While walking in the woods at night over uneven terrain without a flashlight is not something I’d normally recommend, about two dozen teenagers and three adults followed Gudrun by the light of the moon.
On the television show, Bobo and friends would try all sorts of lures to entice Bigfoot to reveal himself, from disco balls and strobe lights to guitar
music and whale songs. Gudrun suggested that we stick with more traditional methods, such as tree knocking. She brought along a special wooden bat just for that.
We stopped at opportune spots along the trail and Gudrun would whack a tree while we stood quietly listening for Bigfoot to respond with a knock or call. The most I could discern in the distance was dogs barking and car engines far away.
The kids took turns making whoops and Bigfoot calls. I think I may have heard a cow low in one of the fields nearby, but I guess, perhaps, it conceivably could have been a Bigfoot.
The kids excitedly reported several unidentified sounds so Gudrun took some recordings to analyze later to be sure what we heard. Although, if Bigfoot really is smart enough to live
among us and remain undetected, he was most likely warming up by our campfire and helping himself to some Hebrew Nationals, while we were out freezing our buns off in the woods.
The kids enjoyed themselves on the night hike. Despite not using flashlights, no one left with a twisted ankle or pants covered in mud. We walked about 90 minutes that night, and some kids weren’t ready to call it a night and head back to camp when we reached the end of the walk.
As we made our way up the hayfield toward the manor house, a herd of deer bounded past the porch, their silhouettes black against the lights behind them. There must have been at least 40 of them.
One of the highlights of the party was looking upward into the heavens and enjoying the stars in the wide open expanse of sky. The night was clear and the stars, billions of them, were twinkling and bright. I heard many a kid express their wonder at the beauty of it all.
Honestly, I’m not sure what the kids were expecting to see more: Bigfoot himself or the ghosts that are rumored to haunt Sotterley. (Full disclosure: I might believe in those a bit, truth be told). But as the parents picked up their kids late that evening, more than one child said they’d had the best time and hope to do something like that again.
We didn’t plan that evening so much to celebrate the outdoors, but even in the frozen dead of winter, all the kids (including an 8-month-old and even the 40-plusyear-old ones) enjoyed the heck of nature, night, stars and friendship. Supernatural beasts or not, it was a very good time.