Did I Just See That?

   Everything about this story was a surprise to me. I've had a few people look at me strangely and ask, "You don't really believe in Bigfoot, do you?" Years ago, I might have asked someone the same thing, and in fact, I actually did ask myself this same question when the incidents started happening.
   I'd lived in the country all of my adult life, always having had lots of woods around. Even as a teen, my younger siblings and I used to run rampant through the woods, playing games and telling stories around campfires. My imagination may have gotten the better of me more than a few times, (sometimes I scared even myself and had to hightail it back to the house when we were camping in the backyard), but in all of my story telling, I never really thought about the legend of the Sasquatch.
   It wasn't until I moved to North Carolina to a large lake area that I started questioning if Bigfoot could actually be real. I'd rented a small, one bedroom cottage in a cove where the water overran into the woods, making a marshy spot around a stream that fed into the lake. I was working 3rd shift at the time and on my nights off, it wasn't unusual for me to sit outside and listen to the night.
   The lighting from a post opposite of the woods cast a dim orange glow on the trees, and maybe the lighting was partly to blame, but something caught my ear, and I started scanning the edge of the woods, expecting to spot a deer on the trail to the water. It was one of those moments you don't see coming at all and you're caught off guard. For the instant my eyes moved along the stance of trees in one area, something stood out. It was a long, furry face hugged against a tree, but my eyes continued past it until my brain realized what it thought it had seen. My eyes darted back to the tree, but the face was gone. Of course, I questioned it, but there was no denying it, I thought it looked like what I'd always heard described as a Bigfoot.
   "Okay? Amusing," I mumbled to myself. At the time, I didn't just suddenly believe I'd seen the face of a Bigfoot. It wasn't until the other things started happening that I began to think there might actually be some truth to the legend.
   I was between books with a series I was working on, and decided I would just write a short story based on the things that had happened at the lake house. I didn't plan an outline around the incidents, I just wrote, which is how I usually do things anyway, but it turned into more than I'd expected and, though it's a simple story, I really enjoyed writing it because it was based on things that had happened and it all came out so effortlessly.
   I decided to publish it, and didn't do a damn thing with it afterwards. Meanwhile, I finished up another novel in the series I'd mentioned, and busied myself with marketing research in an attempt to get those books noticed, plus I worked on a couple of other stories. This was the one book I hadn't given any attention to, but it was the one people were buying. Go figure, right?
   The story and people are fiction, but the repeated incidents with banging noises at the backside of the house, the sound of breaking bones when I was trying to get my dog to come out of the woods, among a lot of other strange occurrences were true. Even though it was in the back of my mind, I still didn't really believe in Bigfoot. I have to say though, that night I was on the back porch when the rock throwing and clapping happened, I started leaning towards the believer's side.
   So, now if someone asks if I really believe in Bigfoot, I don't usually give a 'yes' or 'no' answer. I tell a story.