My name is Dr. Milo Meeker. I was born the first son of four to Elizabeth and John Meeker of Kansas City, Missouri in the fall of 1958. My father taught English at Elder Covenant Catholic School. My mother was a homemaker in the era when that was fiscally possible.
As a teacher, my father had summers off and would take the family on long, grueling road trips primarily to the inter mountain west of the United States. We had a fourteen foot Nuwa travel trailer which could not house the entire Meeker clan. Being the eldest, I was tapped to sleep outside in my canvas tent. Far from feeling ostracized, I honed in on a keen sense of freedom in this situation and found myself pitching my tent further and further away from my family.
It was on one such trip to Conejo Pass, Colorado where I first encountered what would turn out to be my life’s passion. My encounter was not due to my isolation from my family in the evenings as one might think. It was due to a practical joke that my youngest brother, Mortimer, played on me as he was wont to do. It wasn’t so much a joke as an act of violence. We were eating s’mores around the camp fire one beautiful summer evening when Mort yelled, “XYZ!” And jammed his molten chocolate and marshmallow into my open fly. Upon feeling the intense pain of having piping hot confection on my genitalia, I rose to my feet and ran to the banks of the Conejo River.
I submerged into the icy river without even taking off my shoes or dropping my pants. As the relief poured over me, I heard what sounded to me like stifled laughter. It was, rather, a wheezy, unearthly sound of amusement. As I opened my eyes, I saw a dark figure, approximately eight to nine feet tall on the opposite bank. It had almost luminescent, yellow eyes and I could make out a vague smile.
And then, almost as quickly as I saw it, it vanished.
My mother had followed and more than likely scared off the creature. Mortimer was never punished and later became the Sheriff of Huerfano county, Colorado.
I, on the other hand, became obsessed with the figure I witnessed on the banks of the Conejo River and pursued every bit of information I could find. It was an excellent time for my studies as the legend of Sasquatch was becoming a part of the American zeitgeist due largely in part to the Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967.
While often mocked by my peers through my high school years, I found the solace of like minded people while attending the University of Kansas. I obtained a degree of Anthropology in 1978. I pursued a masters degree at the University of Tulsa then moved to Utah State to pursue my doctorate in zoology. I chose this institution because the program offered significant elements of cryptozoology. I soon found to my chagrin that Utah, being somewhat of a theocracy, offered what amounted to straw man representations of cryptozoology and any class offered that touched upon it was only designed to debunk. I was driven underground into fringe groups of believers. Fortunately, it was the 1970s and the height of interest in the paranormal.
It was during this time period that I had my second distinct encounter with what I feel very strongly was Sasquatch. I was camping in the High Uintas. My counter culture peers had reported a flurry of Sasquatch activity in the region and I wanted to see for myself. Back then we used topographic maps to pinpoint locations and my destination was the eight thousand foot range of Bear Mountain.
According to my Timex Indiglo, it was four AM when the three tins of smoked oysters I had for dinner developed into a vicious gastric disturbance in my colon. Squatting over the latrine I dug, I suddenly heard rustling in the darkness. Before I had a chance to do anything, a five pound trout came swinging out of the darkness and struck me upon the right side of the head.
Before I lost consciousness, I heard, quite distinctly, that ethereal sound of amusement from the incident at the Conejo River. I regained consciousness at dawn. My pants were around my ankles and I was smeared with my own filth. The trout that had struck me was next to me and had attracted a black bear which was shyly milling around. Upon my stirring, the bear lowered its ears and prepared to charge me. As I got to my feet, it did so, knocking the wind out of me as I was trying to pull up my soiled pants.
It was almost as if the bear was disgusted at my condition and relented. It grabbed the trout in its jaws and bounded into a chokecherry bush. I finished pulling up my pants and scampered back to my campsite. On my very unpleasant hike back to my vehicle, I calculated that I was at least a mile from any lake that supported a population of trout. And there was no way a bear or large feline could use a fish as a weapon and strike me with such force as to knock me unconscious. Further, I had not seen traces of another human soul around a good 100 yard circumference of my campsite. My discomfort, which included a broken rib, turned to euphoria as I was quite certain that I had had another encounter with a mysterious hominid that inhabits the vast expanse of the American inter-mountain west.
My fervor and belief was at a fever pitch when I accepted a teaching position at Hastings College in Nebraska. This was the institution closest to the part of the United States where most Sasquatch encounters were reported and that would offer the best professional package for my career. In the interest of full disclosure, it was, in fact, the only offer I received.
As the profile of Sasquatch developed more distinctly for me, the topic of the existence of large, secretive hominids found its way into my instruction. This drew the mockery of my colleagues and the ire of my superiors. This boiled over into an unfortunate confrontation which led to my dismissal from Hastings College.
Since my departure from Hastings, it has been my sole mission in life to validate my theories and prove the existence of what can only be described as my nemesis.
Dr. Milo Meeker’s Field Notes 