Sasquatch is a legend that has followed the west for quite some time. We hear the term Sasquatch or more commonly Bigfoot and we suddenly are overwhelmed with images of a large hairy hominid snapping twigs as it stamps its feet through the wilderness, looking over its shoulder at a hapless cameraman to immortalize its casual stroll. But there is another creature out in the wild – one that is even stranger – around Mount Saint Helens. And it’s worth a second look.
We brought you a story about the legendary Batsquatch earlier this year giving a broad analysis and outlining the mysterious figure’s exploits as it was sighted shortly after the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. It’s been compared to Sasquatch, the Mothman, the Jersey Devil and a creature of Irish Folklore. But what are some of the details about this mammoth hominid? How does it survive in the cold of winter? Why does it live so close to a volcano? How can its wings hold it aloft? And what would such a creature eat?
Winged creatures in mythology have often been associated with the supernatural and fantastic elements of our world. It can be a symbol of communication such as with the motifs surrounding Nike or Hermes, and it can also be a picture of aspiration as with the ill fated Daedalus and his son Icarus. They are seen as a connection between our world and other worlds as with the Angels of the bible. And they are seen as a sign of something terrible being able to move very fast – as were seen in the Dragons of Arthurian legend and the modern mythology of Tolkien.
So the question that needs to be asked is how and why Sasquatch found himself with a pair of leathery batwings giving it the appearance of a flying gargoyle more than the typical hairy ape man. Rather than focusing purely on the paranormal elements of Batsquatch’s appearance, let’s take a momentary look at the cultural meaning of the move.
Just before the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980, a book by Author Marian T. Place called “On the Track of Bigfoot” raised several questions and chronicled the sightings of the mysterious creature. Theories even suggested that Bigfoot had come as an alternate evolution from a similar branch in humankind’s past. Erroneously Bigfoot was labeled “The Missing Link” as a suggestion the creature could be a living fossil or link to our own primordial past. But the addition of wings suggests something quite different. If Bigfoot had wings, they would most certainly be unable to allow it to fly lacking both the size and bone structure necessary for flight.
Instead, the wings of Batsquatch push it into the realm of purely supernatural. The creature would have to have been created by some unknown means rather than purely resulting from natural evolution. And so Batsquatch is in its own way a purer form of cryptid – one that not only defies questions about it not being discovered yet but even begging for answers to how it could even exist in the first place.