Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #87: In Search of Big Foot

Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life…. or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.

 

Episode #87. In search of Big Foot

 

Daniel was not ready for the regular counseling at my office even after two years of staying in touch since we had first met at the Summer hippie festival in Emerald Triangle. When I asked him for the last time to see me at my psychiatrist clinic, he gave a flat refusal to my suggestion and said “You still think I am crazy, don’t you? But I know I will get him some day…before I die.” I felt frustrated, but saw the unflustered conviction in his eyes again. Daniel was a firm believer in the existence of Big Foot, the huge violent monster in the woods of Northern California. I was thinking of him as an addle-headed chaser of such weird mysticism, but there was more to his belief than meets the eye.

 

Daniel’s parents got divorced and left when he was five, and he was raised by his devoted grandparents on his mother’s side. Since they were growing cannabis, they would hold a hippie festival and a cheerful hootenanny every summer right there in their place near Spy Rock. Daniel’s grandparents would make some money by selling pot to the zealous anti-war youths and the lovers of liberal life from different regions throughout this country. Among those young ones who would come to the event were a group of Hispanics and Native Americans with a big dream of farming their own marijuana in the area. They were not welcomed by Daniel’s grandparents who had been tasting the joy of making money profusely out of their own produce. The travelers staying in Daniel’s grandparents’ guest house praised in chorus their special dinner trout meunière. They were like “Whoa! This fish tastes so addictive! What did they put in it?.....Could be some cannabis.” After dinner, they used to sit around a bonfire with a guitar and stayed up all night, descanting upon the mythical being that’s possibly living in the woods. Daniel’s grandparents would lose their smile each time they hear their guests talking and singing about the Big Foot in the woods, and Daniel would say that he will catch the monster some day and kill him on the spot. 

 

When I saw Daniel for the last time at his grandparents’ place in Spy Rock, I told him about the documentary film about Sasquatch, the Big Foot. The film approached the murder cases in the Emerald Triangle region from a realistic angle. People living there had believed the murderer was the Big Foot from the woods. According to the documentary film, the killers were none other than Cannabis farmers in that fertile area who wished to leave no stone unturned to keep the outsiders with the same big dream of making money out of marihuana from their resources. Daniel looked me in the eye for two minutes and said “Now we’re on the same page. You don’t think I am insane anymore, right? I am not one of those deranged by smoking pot who would get shell-shocked by the unforeseen Sasquatch. What I’ve been trying hard to catch is a human murderer……and I hope that it wasn’t somebody I know here.” I know Daniel’s grandparents are such earnest and loving menschs, but deep down inside, I felt myself trembling with fear.

 

Expressions

    1.   Emerald Triangle: The Emerald Triangle is a region in Northern California    

    2.  unflustered: unperturbed/unaffected

    3.   Big Foot:  Sasquatch, also called Bigfoot, (from Salish se’sxac: “wild men”) a large, hairy, humanlike creature believed by some people to exist in the northwestern United States and western Canada.

    4.   addle-headed: eccentrically or annoyingly confused, silly, or stupid

    5.   There was more to ….. than meets the eye: It is said when you think a situation is not as simple as it seems to be. This whole business is very puzzling.

    6.   Cannabis: The word “marijuana” refers to parts of or products from the plant Cannabis sativa that contain substantial amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)

    7.   hootenanny: an informal gathering with folk music and sometimes dancing    

    8.  pot: marijuana/ weed

    9.   meunière: (especially of fish) cooked or served in lightly browned butter with lemon juice and parsley

   10. to descant upon something: to sing/play/comment/or discourse about something

   11.  Sasquatch: an abominable ape-like monster/ Big Foot

   12.  to leave no stone unturned: try every possible course of action in order to achieve something

   13. shell-shocked: shocked or confused because of a sudden alarming experience

   14. mensch: a person of integrity and honor