Founded in 1995, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization is the oldest and largest institute devoted to the study of the elusive ape-like creature known for its large, humanlike footprints. In addition to field studies, the BFRO tracks sightings on its website by both state and region. As of July 2020, Washington was the state with the largest number of such sightings, with the tri-county region in which the city of Seattle resides listed as the most popular locale for the fabled Sasquatch.
Given the abundance of Bigfoot sightings, it should be no surprise that author Max Brooks chose the Cascade mountain range as the location for his “when Sasquatch attack” novel Devolution. Composed as a fictional journal with snippets from interviews spliced within, Devolution centers on the very small community of Greenloop – isolated within the wilderness of the Cascades – and the tragic events that followed the volcanic eruption of Mount Rainer.
Greenloop was the brainchild of Tony Durant, an eco-friendly enclave with high speed Internet and an army of drones that weekly deliver food, supplies and everything else that one might need. Greenloop is thus a “back to nature” experiment that retains the comforts of city living despite its isolated location and residents who virtually commute to their jobs.
Durant’s grand design is put to the test when Mount Rainer suddenly erupts, an event unforeseen because of budget cuts to the government agencies charged with monitoring seismic activity. Although not in the path of the resulting volcanic mudflows known as “lahars,” Greenloop feels the aftereffects nonetheless when their Internet and cell phone access is ruptured and the only road leading back to civilization is blocked. Emergency plans call for outside service providers to offer assistance but given their isolated location and distance from Mount Rainer, Greenloop is pretty much forgotten.
“To me, Greenloop was the Titanic, right down to the design flaws and lack of lifeboats,” National Park Ranger Josephine Schell interjects at that point in the narrative. “They were extremely isolated, miles from the one public road which was miles from the nearest town. And, of course, that was the idea. With modern logistics and telecommunication, the world must have still felt very small. But then Rainer cut those connections, and the world suddenly got very big.”
While Greenloop may have been safe from the lahar mudflows, it was directly in the path of the deer, rabbits and other wildlife that had been displaced by the eruption of Mount Rainer. The resulting migration inevitably included an extended family of Sasquatch. Although Bigfoot has largely been able to live outside the reaches of humans and few sightings have included violence on their part, having to abandoned their native lands and fend for food by other means brought out a different side to the mythical creatures.
“Maybe there was some latent gene that woke up in those creatures when they stumbled across Greenloop and found themselves facing a herd of cornered, isolated Homo sapiens,” a former resident of Greenloop hypothesizes in Devolution. “Maybe some instinct told them it was time to swap evolution for devolution, reach back to who they were to reclaim what was theirs.”
It wasn’t just the Sasquatch who devolved. Although Devolution primarily focuses on Greenloop, the car radios of the community’s residents pick up newscasts about the outside world following the eruption of Mount Rainer, most notably Seattle. Puget Sound was jammed by boats and ships afterwards, effectively shutting off the waterway as a means of transportation. Ash from the volcano covered airports and disrupted plane engines, eliminating air travel, while mudslides had traversed all the way to Tacoma, closing down major highways in the process.
The sudden isolation resulted in a panicked population storming grocery stores and gas stations, with fistfights, shootings and the looting of a bread truck breaking out as well. Rescue efforts reportedly concentrated on “corporate assets” like Boeing and Microsoft, leading to civil unrest, and a lone gunman established a sniper’s nest on I-90, adding to the upheaval.
Under the guidance of Tony Durant, the residents of Greenloop initially accept their current fate as a temporary setback. “This situation, the one we find ourselves in now, is exactly what Greenloop is designed for,” Durant tells the others. “Think about it. We’re not in physical danger, just temporary out of touch. We have power from our solar panels, water from our wells, heating from our own biogas. Is anyone going to starve if we don’t get a FreshDirect grocery fix in the next few days?”
The lone dissident is Mostar, a refugee from the Bosnian War of the 1990s who changed her name in honor of the city that she had once called home. Having witnessed firsthand how human beings could delude themselves into believing that they were safe when reality said otherwise – as well as the brutality that they can wage against one another in times of turmoil – Mostar enlists Kate Holland and her husband Dan to secretly transform their garage into a garden, learn to hunt wildlife, and craft weapons from bamboo shoots and kitchen knives.
Even when the first Sasquatch appear, the residents of Greenloop still refuse to feel threatened, believing the creatures to be friendly and merely hunger – not realizing that they themselves might be considered food. “Nature is pure,” Ranger Josephine Schell explains. “Nature is real. Connecting with nature brings out the best in you. That’s what I hear from the poor, dumb dipshits who come up here every year in their new REI outfits, never having felt dirt under their feet, just aching to lose themselves in the Garden of Eden. They all want to live in ‘harmony with nature’ before some of them realize, too late, that nature is anything but harmonious.”
Once the attacks begin in earnest, the residents of Greenloop inevitably “devolve” into a primal state of “kill or be killed,” intent on transforming themselves from prey to hunter, with the Sasquatch in turn falling from hunter to prey. Elements within them that they never would have considered part of their individual natures suddenly manifest, brought to the surface from not only a desperate need to survive but the desire to answer violence with violence of their own.
“We have to kill them,” Kate Holland tells her fellow survivors. “Kill until they’re too afraid to hunt us, or until none of them are left. We have to drive them off or wipe them out. We have to kill them.” By the time rescue units arrive at Greenloop, very little is left. Houses are mere ruins, a small grave site is discovered, and Kate Holland’s journal the only record of what had transpired. Holland herself is missing, possibly having abandoned evolution for devolution herself in the aftermath.
“I’m not talking about revenge,” her brother suggests on the final pages of Devolution. “This is deeper, more primitive. What if those poor dumb brutes flicked a switch in Kate that’s waiting in all of our DNA? What if she didn’t stop at driving those creatures away? What if she went after them?” In the fictional world that author Max Brooks created for Devolution, it is all too real of a possibility.
Anthony Letizia