1973 South island, New Zealand. My friend Rick and I are asleep in a tent in the middle of a fern forest. The ferns are so dense that you can’t see a white piece of paper in front of your face. I have a stomachache. I get up to relieve myself. I’m wearing only underwear and it’s cold. I’m leaning on a small sapling when suddenly my whole world is shattered by the sound of something huge smashing its way towards our camp. There are no other people within miles of us. We have a 22-caliber gun, but it’s in the tent. I can’t believe Rick hasn’t heard the sounds and come out blasting. I shudder in fear as I begin to hear it’s huge feet shake the forest floor as it enters our camp area. I’ve never felt so helpless before. The fear is so all encompassing that I can barely think. I then hear the low loud snorts begin. It begins to mess around with our backpacks. I hear zippers being undone. It dawns on me that it has to be pretty intelligent to do that. I know that there are no large mammals on New Zealand, except sheep. After about 2 minutes it moves off into the woods.
I hurry back into the tent and shake Rick over and over. He is dead to the world. Eventually I find sleep. I awake to Rick shaking me and nearly screaming “Corey, wake up damnit”. It seems he couldn’t wake me either.
“Bigfoot” we both scream at each other. His encounter was similar to mine, but there were 2 creatures and they crouched right next to the tent and snorted repeatedly right were our heads were. Rick was so scared he couldn’t even move. The gun was on his mind, but useless as his body wouldn’t respond. The creatures soon left and he drifted to sleep after trying to wake me.
The following morning we imagined ourselves the ones who would find and photograph them. I had a nice 35mm camera with me. We ate breakfast, loading up daypacks and took off in the direction they went. No footprints were to be seen as the forest floors are like sponges there.
About 2 hours later we stopped for lunch because we were both starving. It should have been around 11AM. I looked at my watch. It was 5PM. I can’t wait to find out what happened during those hours. We never saw a thing, at least consciously.
Corey Wolfe
