From Tekoa to Sasquatch

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Oct 10, 20190

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Jason Burke, Tekoa class of 1992 drove eight regions of Washington's Bigfoot country.

A member of the Tekoa High School class of 1992 has self-published a book.

Jason Burke, a Washington State Parks ranger for nearly 10 years and Eastern Washington University graduate in journalism, released his first book in August. It chronicles a journey.

The title is "Secretly Seeking Sasquatch: A Road Guide to Washington's Bigfoot Country."

Burke began the project in Shoreline where he lived with his wife and two boys, in a lull between employment after being laid off by State Parks in 2012.

He worked at Riverside State Park as a park aide, then became a full park ranger – with a law enforcement commission – at Ocean City State Park and St. Edwards State Park, a day-use former Catholic Seminary on Lake Washington.

He decided to visit regions of the state with Bigfoot reports, and write a chapter about each area.

"I needed the experience for myself, and that's what the book was about," Burke said. "It's all about playing the odds. I really started pouring myself into it."

Then he got a new job.

"Head custodian at my kids' school," he said.

On the side, the book work continued. The eight regions were the Olympic Peninsula, southwest Washington, northern Cascades, Stevens and Chinook mountain passes, (Skookum) Skamania County, Okanogan and Walla Walla.

As a boy, Burke learned of the "Rock Lake Monster" and appeared in a Whitman County (then Colfax) Gazette article with his family in the late '70s.

"I've told these yarns of cryptozoology that have been going on my entire life," he said.

While the Sasquatch book carries a fun tone, it was an intentional journey just the same.

Burke's travels started in 2013. His wife and kids were gone for a weekend that March. and he got on a ferry in Edmonds to drive all of Highway 101 in two days.

The first morning, he pulled his Ford Focus over south of Quilcene and walked up a forest road for a rest stop.

He spotted a game trail, including some small trees snapped over at about six feet high, his interest piqued by his ranger background.

Then he saw what appeared to be a footprint.

As he wrote:

"I was looking at something that looked like a huge footprint. It wasn't perfect. It didn't have the perfectly-formed series of five toes like the photos in the books. But it was clearly the impression of something heavy and not a peculiar geological enigma."

He took a picture of it, and though he had casting material (gypsum joint compound, used in drywalling) in the trunk of his car, as he wrote, his "own personal skepticism somehow browbeat my confidence so much that I'd rather have convinced myself it couldn't be a Sasquatch print than walk 75 feet back to my car to get my forensic supplies. I drove away trying to convince myself I hadn't seen what I'd seen."

In the end, what did he decide?

"Either I was just blind stupid lucky or these things happen all over the place," Burke said.

He now lives in Annville, Pa., his wife's hometown.

He once sold shoes at the former Bon Marche in downtown Spokane.

"For longer than I intended," he said. "Less than 10 years."

What did he think of his Tekoa roots?

"Growing up in Tekoa shaped me in that I was able to play football and have the freedom to take off anytime I wanted on my dirt bike," he said.

Burke did not pursue publishing companies for the book. He went to Amazon Publish on Demand and Kindle Direct Publishing.

So what about this footprint, why would a footprint appear by itself?

"I don't really know why," he said. "Aside from being fake, that would be first and foremost. But otherwise, maybe the others didn't make enough of an impression for me to decipher... It was convincing enough not so much to make me a true believer, but it tipped the scales considerably, because I didn't have an explanation. I tried to debunk it in my head... It wasn't in a place where someone would've hoaxed it."

The book is also available at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Wash., next to Shoreline.