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Guilt

How about this: we’re afraid of nature, or the amped-up, Category 5, record-breaking, gloves-off, extreme weather beast that nature has become in the 21st century. And that fear is shot through with guilt, and we really really really want to believe that nature is still untamed, still unknown, still bigger than our efforts to destroy it.

Is all that enough to make you see an Impossible Scary Animal?

Bigfoot and the Environmental Movement

As we ponder this, ponder this, too: OG Impossible Scary Animal Bigfoot really had a moment in the 1970s, in terms of serious widespread sighting reports, academic and government inquiry, and plenty of cultural artifacts. Like songs, such as “Bigfoot,” from 1973 and a different song with same title in 1976. Also, several creature-feature-type monster movies, like 1972’s “Legend of Boggy Creek.” Guest slots on popular TV series like the Six Million Dollar Man, which ran from 1974 to 1978. Plus toys, including numerous action figures, some with a “rocket cycle,” all of which you have got to see for yourself.

Someone else might unpack whether the Bigfootiness of the 1970s connected with the birth of the modern environmental movement, and also with the groundswell of horror at the state of the natural world that spawned that environmental movement. Horror in reaction to burning rivers and endangered eagles and deadly smog and such. The landmark book Silent Spring kind of kicked off that horror when it was published in 1962. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire (yes, really). Also a real wake up call. Those woken up celebrated the First Earth Day the next year, in 1970. That gets things going in terms of environmentalism in the modern age. Plus remember – there was a general atmosphere of protest and distrust of government and authorities, after the scandal of Watergate, which wrapped up when President Nixon finally resigned in 1974, and the Vietnam War, which finally ended for the US in 1973.

Compared to all of that, is it so far-fetched that The Man might be hiding the existence of a giant bipedal ape out the woods? Maybe not.

Fifty years later, here we are, with a lot of those same sentiments, even though the details vary. Maybe Bigfoot and their Impossible friends are back, too, because we need them? 1970s Action figures not included, sadly.

For more facts and figures and links about the impossible things we do and don’t see, see “Impossible Scary Animals: Seeing What’s Not There.”

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