CHAPTER 48

  THE LANG INSTITUTE

  Windsor, California, was a small, quaint township set among rolling green hills of native grass and dotted with oak trees. The township was small and quaint, similar to the towns that dot the map of Iowa. The weather was also much nicer in California, and we were grateful to be away from the snowy winters of the Midwest.

  The Lang Institute was on a modern campus. It was nothing like where we taught in Iowa City. The campus was just outside of town on a large compound that included just one building. This structure was a futuristic, two-story, circular building made of nearly all glass. It sat in the middle of the rolling hills of the property like a glass egg in a green meadow.

  Mimi and I met with the director of the institute, Dr. Krantz. Our interview with him was a mere formality. With Dr. Peterson’s recommendation, all was already approved. We were then given the keys to the house in town, provided by the Institute. James, Dr. Peterson’s assistant, drove us to the house. As we pulled up, Mimi and I were amazed. The house was a bungalow surrounded by trees. The grass was rich green. I couldn’t help but think of our house in Iowa City with the brown grass and a lone tree barely surviving each winter.

  “You should have everything you need here,” James said. “The house has two bedrooms and an area for a study. There are lots of built-ins.”

  Mimi and I were pleasantly surprised by the accommodation. We were finally back to living together with our son, JD. We agreed to make payments on the house to the Institute, and Mimi was happy that instead of renting, we would be making payments on a house that would eventually be our own.

  Mimi would be teaching lectures in some of the Institute’s fellowship programs. She had everything she wanted. She finally had the home and family she wanted.

  Fitch helped us get settled into the house. He was quite handy. He really seemed to enjoy being helpful. The Institute found him a job and a place to work as a favor to us. He and Mimi also easily found some nice common ground. She admitted his strangeness had been off-putting at first, but had come to find him warm and genuinely helpful.  Dr. Peterson introduced me to Dr. Salvateer. He was a lab researcher and cryptozoologist. He was a short, round man with gray hair and big circular glasses. He had worked for the Institute for several years. His professional training was in zoology, and he had worked for Ian Lang, personally, on his estate, caring for animals in his zoo.

  Salvateer was very interested in my ancient theories and research as they related to the formal anthropology of giants. It was obvious to me why we had been teamed up. He was very curious to hear my theory about the history of giants as a race.

  Salvateer had a theory that would bring the two of us together. He believed there was a genetic link between the legendary race of giants and the species of giants that the Native Americans referred to as Sasquatch, also known by others as Bigfoot.

  Salvateer explained that in Humboldt County, some road workers had come across a giant footprint and immediately alerted scientists. A casting of the footprint was made. Dr. Salvateer had been one of the scientists summoned.

  He told me, “As soon as I saw it, I was a believer.”

  Salvateer reported the findings to Lang, who then used the news event in his publications. It was from this finding in Humboldt County that the media deemed the creature “Big Foot” because of the large size foot that was cast. Salvateer hated the media-created name and continued his research using the name Sasquatch, which was the Native American name given to the creature many tribes had claimed to see in the Pacific Northwest.

  Salvateer showed me two castings of giant footprints. He asked, “How old do you suspect those prints in New Mexico to be?”

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  “I guess maybe five hundred years. Who knows, maybe even older? We were unable to collect a sample for carbon testing,” I answered.

  He smiled and then turned over one of the samples. “This one is from the site in New Mexico, you say five hundred years old. This one is from a site in Humboldt County, here in California. The print from the one here in California was cast less than ten years ago. The print when cast was a fresh track, not one cast in petrified rock.”

  I was flabbergasted. I wondered how it was possible. I looked at each casting. The two were nearly identical in width and were obviously made by the same species. I asked, “Is this possible? A modern casting of the same species hundreds of years later?”

  Salvateer smiled, “It is. You see, what you and Peterson brought me from New Mexico is a link, a line from the past to the present.”

  I wanted to know everything he knew about the Sasquatch and the modern Bigfoot. Salvateer let me know there were hundreds of credible sightings every year, and well-documented Native American stories of giant warriors, tribes, and half-man/half-god beings. The legend of the Sasquatch in Native American culture was identical to the legends or lore of giants. The Indians believed that Sasquatch, like the giants from Ramon’s tribes, were spiritual beings that passed between the two realms. Was it possible that the modern-day Sasquatch was the giants of old I was looking for?

  Salvateer had no skeletal remains. He had no other physical proof. He only had his footprint castings.

  The two of us worked together piecing together a history of both giants of old and those of modern times. There was an obvious connection between the history and research I had amassed from ancient times and the findings in North America. Salvateer was interested in putting his modern-day findings and research on the Sasquatch with my research. Together, we were able to bridge two histories. It was a breakthrough for both of us.

  The finding in Humboldt County was just the first step in what we hoped to find next. I could not believe how fortunate I was to be where I was at this moment in my life. I was back on track! I was even closer to finding proof that giants exist.

  Ian Lang had originally wanted Salvateer to capture a Sasquatch to put in his private zoo. Lang had hoped the finding could also be used extensively in many of Lang’s numerous daily newspapers. Unfortunately, Salvateer was never able to locate, let alone capture, one before Lang had died. At the time of Lang’s death, Salvateer began working full-time for the Institute and had still not been able to capture his own giant.

  Salvateer and I wanted proof that such a race or species existed. We each argued as to whether such a find would be more human or more animal. Over the course of my research at Lang, I would draw the conclusion that the print was more human than animal or ape. It was a biped, and while most apes could walk on two legs, most did not. Apes make use of their long arms to aid in their movement and walking. We both examined and reexamined the prints and compared them to both humans and apes. The species carried its weight more like a human than an ape. Also, in footprints, human ridges run horizontally across the width of the foot. On primates, the ridges run diagonally. The ridges on the prints from White Sands were not legible, but the ones from Humboldt County ran horizontally. This made it easy for us to draw the same conclusion that this was a human species more than an animal.

  I was inspired by the progress we were making at Lang. I spent many hours in the lab, and I always made it home for dinner to be with Mimi and the baby. Fitch helped with household chores during the day while I worked. He patched walls, painted, and did other general maintenance I couldn't do. He and Mimi were becoming friends. Any hesitation she held before was melting away. Fitch helped her plant a garden and a few fruit trees in the yard. Things were going well. But contentment, I had learned, was never enough to keep me still for long. The footprint castings haunted me. Every quiet evening at home was shadowed by the feeling that the answer was out there, somewhere in the vast wilderness between California and Canada, waiting to be found.

  The Institute continued to pressure Salvateer and me to formalize our studies and to work as hard as possible to find physical proof. Salvateer was no field researcher. So, it was left to Fitch and me to conduct field studies. In the years that followed, we covered nearly all the terrain between California and Canada. I was intent on finding my giant. I also believed we were now based in the best locale possible for such a find.

  The pressure from the Institute was coming directly from Lang Publishing. Lang Publishing was looking to us for a sensational story that they could run. Finding a Big Foot was certainly a story they knew would sell papers.

  Salvateer and I split our work between what he could do in the lab and what I could do in the field. We stayed in good contact with what we were doing. It was a true partnership. While Fitch and I were out scouting the land for evidence that giants existed, Salvateer was locked up in the lab doing what he could for the same cause. Our goal: to prove that Bigfoot existed and was alive, and that he was nearby.