Last Friday was like any other day for Sam Otis, 36, of Port Townsend, with one big exception.

Make that one Bigfoot exception.

Otis had just got off his shift as a sawyer for Puget Logging Co. at the timber giant’s Snow Creek property. While returning to his truck, he says he stumbled upon a trail of large humanoid tracks.

“I knew what I was seeing right away,” he told the Leader. “I’ve always had a feeling that Bigfoot was out there, you know, watching the crew. Now there’s proof.”

Otis’s proof is in the form of two photographs of the tracks. In one, he put a dollar bill in the frame to show scale…

“We’re going to find something,” Dante insisted as he downed a bottle of Mexican Coke.

Maddie smiled encouragingly from her cell phone.

“Yeah,” she said as she clicked a deluge of Likes on her friend’s Instagram posts. “Something.”

The ride was rough going up the old logging road. Puget Logging had intended harvesting more timber there, but an endangered species, the spotted owl, put an abrupt stop to those plans. The irony was the little bird was discovered by a group of crypto-hunters in search of Sasquatch.

Sam Otis’s story cost him and everyone on his crew their jobs.

Maddie looked down at her phone.

“No service,” she announced.

Dante looked over at her. “You don’t always need to be on your phone. Let’s enjoy the moment.”

It was a familiar refrain. She was on her phone a lot. More so with Dante’s new obsession taking center stage.

Maybe they weren’t right for each other after all?

She glanced away from her nonfunctioning Samsung and thought it over. Dante was handsome. Kind. Had a good job. What more could she want?

The terrain grew rougher, steeper and the roadway narrowed.

“I feel like I’m in a NutriBullet,” she finally said.

“Yeah. Shocks are shitty on this car.”

That’s true, she thought. His car is shitty. That’s a solid strike against him.

“Let’s pull over,” she said.

“Nah. Can’t here, but up ahead I see a wider spot.”

A minute later, they stopped next to a slash pile of stumps and other refuse from the forest. It had been there such a long time that a Douglas fir seedling managed to get a foothold and rose like a Christmas tree topper from the wood rubble.

“I got to take a leak,” Dante said, on his way to the other side of the road.

I need to figure out where this relationship is going, Maddie thought as she perched on a sun-bleached log.

Dante stood in the familiar stance, legs planted apart, rinsing the road dust from a natural hedge of Himalayan blackberry bushes. The razor-wire-like brambles were laden with ripening fruit. The aroma of sun-warmed blackberries is many Pacific Northwesterner’s idea of summertime heaven.

“Hey, we should pick some berries.”