Knocking in Palo Pinto County, Texas

It was 1969, and I was at summer camp at age 14. I was one of about 20 campers and two counselors that went on a 3 day, 2 night canoe/camping trip down the Brazos River. We put in just below the dam at Possum Kingdom Lake. The first night we camped near and before the Highway 4 bridge. We set up our tents on a section of open, flat grass next to the river. There was a 30' cliff that was set back from the river around 30 yards, and that ran in both directions for quite a ways. As we were setting up camp and securing the canoes for the night, several campers noticed some type of unknown animal peering down on us from the cliff, only a glimpse of the head was ever seen, and was in a different location each time. No one was really concerned or thought much about it. The night was uneventful, and we all slept well. The next morning we were up eating breakfast, and loading the canoes. As I came back for another load, my tent/canoe buddy said he had seen the animal - asked if he knew what it was, and said it was a fox. I had found a way to get up the cliff face, and we were on top in no time. As we made the last push to the top, we could hear something running off through the woods. We immediately gave chase, and I was in the lead. There were some very large boulders scattered about, and I ran around one of the larger ones. As I came flying around the edge of this boulder, I ran smack into a rather large tree, which knocked me back flat on my rump. I was crumpled at the base of this tree and dazed. When my eyes focused again, I noticed the tree had hair. I looked up, it screamed, I peed in my pants (literally), my friend screamed, I screamed, it screamed again, and all of this in quick but distorted time. We ran fast, and right off the edge of the cliff, forgot it was there. We were in a blind panic. At the time, no one around there had even heard of a bigfoot, so it was hard to explain. We said it was a giant gorila, but that didn't go over too well at all with anybody, including all the other campers and counselors who heard the screams, and witnessed our fall, from grace as it turned out - they thought we were crazy and made the whole thing up. Also, why fake something and risk death? I only say that because the fall we took over that cliff shoulda killed or seriously injuried us. We were VERY lucky in that we landed in the only spot that offered survival. In retrospect, the creature was not aggressive, and must have been very curiuos about us.