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This book is as much about people and place as it is about the mythical hominid in our backyard. Pyle is a naturalist and a rational man thrust against doubt, and the beauty of the wild unknown flits through these pages like the shadow of his prey flits through hemlock and fir. Pyle favors hard science and the poetry of the backcountry, and, in his quest to understand the Bigfoot phenomena, he hikes and backpacks Washington's deep wilderness and returns to interview First Nation elders, serious Bigfoot hunters, loony hoaxers, anthropologists, and the residents of dying logging towns. Reading this made me think hard about what it is that drives determined people into the territory of the unknown. And it made me wonder what really does lurk out there in the deep winding ridges and forests of the Northwest. By the end of Where Bigfoot Walks, I wanted to believe — and I understood not just why some people do, but what implications that belief has for everyone living in its shadow.