Peter Matthiessen won the National Book Award three times and co-founded the influential literary journal Paris Review.
The author of “Shadow Country” and “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” was an ardent environmentalist, heralded as “our greatest modern nature writer in the lyrical tradition.” Early in his career, he worked as an undercover agent for the CIA.
He also believed in Bigfoot.
Sasquatch has recently returned to the public consciousness, leading to the publication of new books on the subject and even the Indian army announcing it had discovered “Mysterious Footprints” that could belong to Yeti, Bigfoot’s “abominable snowman” cousin.
And so now Matthiessen’s nephew, science journalist Jeff Wheelwright, has delved into his uncle’s little-known Bigfoot obsession in an essay for Yale Review. It turns out that in 1976, while kicking around the Pacific Northwest, Matthiessen saw “a tall, bipedal figure run across the road and disappear into the trees.” You think sasquatches are big, clumsy, ape-like creatures? The one Matthiessen spotted “jumped a tangle of stumps and logs with the ease of a deer.”