Imagining Bigfoot: Local Authors Explore Legend and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Washington State University Vancouver will host novelist Molly Gloss and nature writer Robert Michael Pyle in an Oct. 28 conversation about how their works have addressed legend and landscape in the Pacific Northwest.

The discussion will begin at 7 p.m. in the Student Services Building, Room 110, on the WSU Vancouver campus. Sue Armitage, director of the Center for Columbia River History and professor of history at WSU, will facilitate the discussion.

Gloss and Pyle have both explored the human encounter with nature and history in the Pacific Northwest in their writings using the figure Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) as a protagonist.

Gloss is a fourth-generation Oregonian who lives in Portland. Her novel “The Jump-Off Creek” was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction and was a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award. Her work frequently explores questions of landscape and the human response to wilderness. 

Pyle was born and raised in Colorado. His books include “Wintergreen: Rambles in a Ravaged Land,” “The Thunder Tree,” “Walking the High Ridge: Life as Field Trip” and “Chasing Monarchs: Migrating with the Butterflies of Passage.” His works have won a number of awards, including the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Washington Governor’s Writers Awards, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Harry B. Nehls Award in Nature Writing. His column “The Tangled Bank” appears regularly in Orion magazine.

Pyle and Gloss will also appear in Portland Friday, Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society, 1200 S.W. Park Ave., Portland, OR 97205; and in Astoria, Ore., Saturday, Oct. 30 at 2 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the Columbia River Maritime Museum, 1792 Marine Drive, Astoria, OR 97103.

Through the James B. Castles Heritage Endowment, the Center for Columbia River History sponsors annual public programs throughout the region about the Columbia River Basin. In addition to the Castle’s Endowment Lecture, the center presents special programs and the Castles Heritage Award, which honors an individual or organization that fosters a deeper understanding of the history of the Columbia Basin.

Born in Montana, Jim Castles spent his life pursing and promoting the art, culture and heritage of the Columbia River and the West. The Castles programs are funded through an endowment from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust of which Castles was a founding trustee and 20-year board member.

The Center for Columbia River History is a consortium of the Washington State Historical Society, Portland State University and WSU Vancouver. The center’s mission is to promote the study of the history of the Columbia River Basin.

WSU Vancouver offers 16 bachelor’s and nine master’s degrees in more than 35 fields of study. The campus is located at 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Ave., east of the 134^th Street exit from either I-5 or I-205.