This past weekend I drove out to the Bankhead National Forest and the Lakeshore Marina Restaurant and Lodge near Double Springs, Alabama to attend the first-ever Bama Bigfoot conference. It was a most pleasant way to spend a sunny and still-too-warm-for-October Saturday, where I met some interesting people and heard some interesting stories. More on that in a second.
I have a personal connection to the Bankhead Forest, and the Sipsey River Wilderness contained in its heart. My grandfather, when he was a young man, hunted and dug wild ginseng root there. He knew the forest well, and made a nice income from selling ginseng before his health deteriorated to the point he was no longer able to keep doing it. He died when I was still young, but my earliest years were filled with his stories about the forest. For me it was a fairy land, a deep, primeval, magical place. It still is. That’s why there couldn’t have been a better setting for the Bigfoot conference. If ever a place looked like Bigfoot belonged there—and there have been sightings in the Bankhead—it’s that place.
Now about those stories. Did the guys telling them strike me as kooks? No. They seemed to me to be much the opposite, downhome country folks, honest, sincere, sane, credible, level-headed and sober.
Did I believe the stories they were telling? Yeah. I did. I’ll be sharing some of those stories with you all this week. I think you will enjoy them as much as I did.