The Courage to Conclude
Science, Serendipity, and Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum's Big Footprint
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a serendipitous visit to The Sasquach Museum and Research Center in Blue Ridge, GA, on my way to Mercier Orchards to pick apples. Now, over the weekend, I read the obituary for Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, in The Wall Street Journal. Bigfoot was his life’s work, and he’s quoted as saying he didn’t believe Bigfoot exists. He concluded Bigfoot exists using the scientific method.
The question here is not whether you or I believe in Bigfoot. Instead, how do we make the distinction between belief and conclusion?
Dr. Meldrum specialized in foot morphology and bipedal locomotion. Where we might see and perceive poetic footprints at the edge of a muddy forest, he saw intriguing patterns of pressure and the mechanics of motion that asked: What do we do with evidence that challenges what we think we know?
What was it like for him to take a subject our culture often laughs at and work to bring discipline to the process of scientific investigation? There’s a cost to that kind of courage. It requires a different sort of backbone.
When I wrote about the Bigfoot archetype as the Wild Man—the outsider who refuses easy capture—it was in the context of intuitive knowing. Archetypes are portals. Myth names our hunger for the unseen. Had I met Dr. Meldrum, I’m sure he would have listened respectfully to my “Bigfoot is a feeling” while using science to enrich our conversation. Myth and science together train the eye to track patterns the culture hasn’t yet learned to see. And this reminds me of the forebears that we take for granted today.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) The Empirical Imagination
His notebooks reveal a mind unwilling to separate art from anatomy, design from data. Through relentless sensory observation, he concluded truths about human musculature, hydraulics, and aerodynamics centuries before they were proven. His creative intelligence was a form of disciplined methodology.
Copernicus (1473 - 1543) Launched a Cultural Revolution
He didn’t believe the Earth moved around the Sun. He concluded it. His evidence came from patterns in planetary motion that refused to behave under theological models. He hesitated to publish De revolutionibus because he understood what a conclusion could cost. His courage lay in precision and restraint.
Galileo (1564 - 1642) The Telescope as Proof
Through his handmade telescope, Galileo saw moons circling Jupiter and declared what could no longer be unseen. His conclusion, not his belief, placed him under house arrest. The Church punished him not for superstition, but for method. The notion that observation could correct doctrine was incomprehensible. Galileo taught the world that seeing is not heresy when guided by evidence.
Marie Curie (1867 - 1934) The Radiant Proof
She didn’t believe in invisible energy. She developed the methodology to isolate it. In a world where few accepted that unseen rays could hold power, she followed the evidence into exhaustion and illumination. “Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood.” Curie’s courage was intellectual as well as physical. Her conclusion cost her life. She died of radiation poisoning.
Bridge to Dr. Meldrum
Each of these figures lived at the fault line where mystery meets method. Dr. Meldrum stood on that same line, even at the risk of academic skepticism and public ridicule. Reading the comments on his obituary page that were left by those who knew or met him, part of Dr. Meldrum’s legacy is that he made people feel seen and heard, regardless of what they believed about Bigfoot. Living as a bridge between myth and science, he showed that the unknown need not be exiled from reason. It can be examined slowly, transparently, without contempt.
Was it Serendipity?
Perhaps it was serendipity that I wandered into the Sasquatch Museum just two weeks before Dr. Meldrum’s passing. Or perhaps it was something more subtle, an unseen pattern that draws us toward what we’re meant to notice. His life reminds me that courage isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s a quiet devotion to follow the evidence wherever it leads, even when it leads us farther into mysteries.
As readers, writers, and seekers, may we practice the devotion to listen, to look again, and to keep walking the fine line between myth and science with fearless curiosity. We need those who study the evidence and those who sense its primordial story.
Between them, truth moves forward.
Vote and share a story of your own serendipitous pattern in the comments.
The serendipity of Bigfoot. Great read.
Just catching up on this and hearing about a favorite character, Big Foot, and Dr. Meldrum. Thanks, Melissa, for putting together a cast of brilliant characters and so much more - an inspiring and informed mystical experience to read about them.