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FURRY_DREAMS

                                             April  10, 2013
                                             August 26, 2013


   Hanging around at Burning Man some years back,
   I overheard a member of our group go into a
   long story about something that had happened
   to him while bike touring in South America.

   The story began with him deciding to try an odd
   trail on the map, which turned out to be much
   harder than anything he expected, leading up into
   some high mountains.  He was slogging his way
   through snow at the top before he finally made it
   over the crest, feeling exhausted and lucky he
   hadn't died doing it, and then descending on the
   other side.

   On the way down he had this odd experience with
   some large animal running along, paralleling the
   trail, finally running along behind him.  It was
   really big, running on two feet. He made it down
   the other side, where the locals were stunned to
   hear he'd come over the mountains. He was invited
   inside someone's home, where he told the story
   about the strange animal, and his host responded
   something like "so you actually saw it..."
   Sightings of it were pretty rare, but nevertheless
   he could show him some pictures of it in a book.



       Okay, now at the time, my reaction to
       this was something like "Hm, if I'd
       heard this from someone I didn't know,
       there's no way I'd believe it."
       I think there was at least one occasion
       where I thought about repeating the
       anecdote to someone, but I realized
       how it would sound, and stopped.

       I wouldn't say I was convinced about
       every detail of the story, but I was
       at least willing to give it some
       creedence.


            This guy all but dropped out
            of our social circle, moved
            on to other things, changed
            his handle...

            He veered through some different
            professions like "real estate agent"--

            He's currently settled down        (During the great bubble,
            into what looks like a cult        I heard him intone "San
            leader racket, with lots of        Francisco is a brand!",
            mindless new age suckers           and I lost a lot of
            telling him how cool he            respect for him right there.)
            is... none of the old gang have
            any respect for him at all.

               Looking back on it, I think it's
               remarkable that his Yeti story
               didn't totally set off my bullshit
               alarms.

               He must've done a pretty good job
               in some way... getting the intonations
               just right, avoiding the use of any
               terminology like "yeti" or "sasquatch"
               that would send him straight to the
               crank file.

               I've heard bullshit with much less
               in the way of fantastic premises
               that set off my alarms much faster.


                  One of the things that I think helped was
                  the use of a conventional, modern frame
                  for the story: bike touring in exotic
                  lands is the kind of thing friends of
                  mine might do, perhaps the kind of thing
                  I might do.   Many of my own stories
                  would begin in a similar way, the route
                  chosen on impulse that was unexpectedly
                  difficult, leading into strange terrain.









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