River stealth

Then the researchers got everything online and went through their routine. They played primate calls over the speakers and then dutifully recorded the forest afterward. Everything broke down again. The researchers soldiered on, repairing things, and eventually Gary tried wood knocking, which meant banging on trees with fallen limbs and waiting to hear if there was a response.
I liked Dr. Sinor, but I had asked to come strictly as a ride-along and I didn’t pitch in with her team’s efforts.
The whole “let’s find Bigfoot” thing seems a little ill planned to me, personally. Granted, my perspective is different from that of nonwizards, but marching out into the woods, looking for a very large and very powerful creature by blasting out what you’re pretty sure are territorial challenges to fight (or else mating calls) seems . . . somewhat unwise.
I mean, if there’s no Bigfoot, no problem. But what if you’re standing there, screaming, “Bring it on!” and find a Bigfoot?
Worse yet, what if he finds you?
Even worse, what if you were screaming, “Do me, baby!” and he finds you then?
Is it me? Am I crazy? Or does the whole thing just seem like a recipe for trouble?
 So, anyway, while I kept my little fire going, the Questionably Wise Research Variety Act continued until after midnight. That’s when I looked up to see a massive form standing at the edge of the trees, in the very outskirts of the light of my dying fire.
I’m in the ninety-ninth percentile for height, but this guy was tall. My head might have come up to his collarbone, barely, assuming I had correctly estimated where his collarbone was under the long, shaggy, dark brown hair covering him. It wasn’t long enough to hide the massive weight of muscle he carried on that enormous frame or the simple, disturbing, very slightly inhuman proportions of his body. His face was broad and blunt, with a heavy brow ridge that turned his eyes into mere gleams of reflected light.
Most of all, there was a sense of awesome power granted to his presence by his size alone, chilling even to someone who had seen big things in action before. There’s a reaction to something that much bigger than you, an automatic assumption of menace that is built into the human brain: Big equals dangerous.
It took about fifteen seconds before the first researcher—Gary, I think—noticed and let out a short gasp. In my peripheral vision, I saw the entire group turn toward the massive form by the fire and freeze into place. The silence was brittle crystal.


Brief Cases, I was a Teenage Bigfoot, Page 88-89