They shook their heads, my kids did, when I bought the cabin in the mountain meadow. They visit at Easter and a couple weeks in summer sometimes, invite me at Christmas.
Most of the year it’s me and the cabin and Boomer, my old redbone coonhound. He sits by my rocking chair on the porch as I knit the long, summer evenings, and by my rocking chair fireside as I knit the long, winter nights.
My granddaughter, little Beth, asked me once why I knit hats so large and socks so big. I told her not to tell anyone. Her eyes big, she promised.
I knit socks and caps and such things for Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Whatever you want to call them.
Everyone, even creatures uniquely suited to living secretly in the wilderness, appreciates homemade. Even a hairy thing like Bigfoot likes a cap in winter.
***
Peter Tomlinson was trying out new snowshoes. He wore a parka with a fur-lined hood and thin gloves and he took giant steps. When he found the knit hat, he took it off the branch, wondered briefly about hygiene, and decided it was better to wear than his hood.
He snowshoed further and he found mittens. He took those too.
Then he found socks. He should have heeded the foxes yapping and the coyotes howling and crows cawing and the buzzards circling when he took the socks. But he didn’t.
***
I heard them yelling and crying and carrying on and I pitied them. The poor darlings. I’d seen the snowshoer. He’d taken their socks. They’d have let him have the cap. The mittens. They would have shared the scarf, too, if the poor fool had found it. But the socks. Who can wear Bigfoot socks who isn’t a Bigfoot? That city boy had no idea what he was messing with when he came up here for winter deer camp. Had he come to my cabin in the meadow, I’d have made him his own cap, and mittens and scarf and socks.
***
Peter Tomlinson recognized the angry creatures from the photo he’d always assumed was a fake. He never even thought to get his own picture.
INSTANT NOODLES 