06/13/2026
My Sick Father Asked Me to Drive Him into the Woods—Said He Wanted to Say Goodbye To a Bigfoot There
Details below
My father asked me to drive him three hours into the woods on the second Saturday of October, 2026.
At the time, he was seventy-nine years old and dying.
For nearly two years, a cruel lung disease had been shrinking his world piece by piece. The strong man who once spent entire weekends wandering deep through the Adirondack wilderness could no longer walk to his mailbox without stopping to catch his breath. An oxygen tube ran beneath his nose, connected to a green metal tank that hissed softly every time he inhaled.
The disease had confined him to the corner of his living room, where his recliner faced a window looking west. Most days he sat there for hours, watching the distant tree line as if something beyond it was calling his name.
On a Friday evening in early October, I was sitting at his kitchen table eating a bowl of homemade soup when he suddenly set down his spoon and looked at me.
“There’s someone I need to see one more time before the end,” he said quietly. “And I need you to take me.”
I asked who it was.
Instead of answering, he told me to pack a thermos of coffee and a blanket. Then he instructed me to arrive at his house at six o’clock the next morning.
“The drive will take about three hours each way,” he said. “We’ll be back before dark.”
He paused to catch his breath.
“Bring your warm jacket. I’d like to walk a little when we get there… if my lungs allow it.”
Then his voice dropped lower than I had ever heard before.
“The man we’re going to see will already be there waiting when we arrive.”
A faint smile crossed his face.
“He always is.”
My name is Calvin Boudreau.
I was fifty-six years old that autumn and owned a small heating and cooling business outside Plattsburgh, New York. I had spent my entire life within fifty miles of the town where I grew up. My days were filled with repairing furnaces, servicing boilers, and helping families survive the brutal Adirondack winters.
I wasn't a hunter.
I wasn't particularly outdoorsy.
I preferred familiar roads, familiar people, and sleeping in my own bed.
My father was the opposite.
Armand Boudreau belonged to the woods.
For more than forty years he had disappeared into the forests west of our home almost every weekend. Sometimes he returned with deer or fish. Most times he came back with nothing except a distant look in his eyes.
My mother never questioned him.
Neither did I.
There was simply a part of my father that existed somewhere beyond the reach of ordinary life.
A secret place.
A place he rarely spoke about.
But I knew enough.
When I was twenty-seven, he had taken me there once.
Only once.
I remembered the long drive into the wilderness. I remembered a hidden spring deep in the forest. Most importantly, I remembered seeing something that I had spent nearly thirty years convincing myself wasn't real.
.
