So what were you doing out there in the woods?

Gawain MacGregor: I was on a road trip. There’s a bunch of states right there that meet up, so I was in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. A lot of the time I spent in Rock City, which is technically in Georgia, but it's right on the border of three states. And I also spent a bunch of time in Asheville, and up in McDowell county where they saw me, that's just northeast of Asheville.

Were you road tripping alone?

No, I was road tripping with my family.

Oh, so you were camping in the woods with your family?

My family was in Pisgah National Forest, and I left by myself and went out to a more less-crowded area. I couldn’t really do what I do in Pisgah. There’s too many people. It’d be disturbing to me and other people that are hiking or whatever there. So I just went in the woods, set up my camp, and did my thing. I go to a more remote location, so that's why I was surprised to see other people. I imagine they probably came in the woods around the same clearing I did, and we just bumped into each other at night. And that’s pretty much that. I saw them, they saw me. I turned and left, and they kind of stood there looking at me.

You were in the middle of your ritual when they saw you. Tell us more about that.

I mean, you can call it a ritual or whatever you want. I guess I call it a ritual. It’s just part of a larger thing. And there’s more to it than just wandering. It’s reenacting some scenes that took place in the stories that make up “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” which is, you know, the oldest story ever told. People who have interviewed me about the Sasquatch mix-up haven’t really gone back and looked at what I talked about.

In the story of Gilgamesh, the character Enkidu dies as a martyr to bring Gilgamesh’s humanity back in the balance, because he had succumbed to the sins associated with living in civilized society. Gilgamesh is a symbol for our sins and Enkidu is a martyr. Now, every religion has got their own martyr, but Enkidu is the first one ever. No one ever talks about that. And when he dies, to honor him, Gilgamesh sheds his worldly garments, makes a suit of animal skins, and goes wandering. So really my ritual is just a reenactment of a sacred drama in the epic of Gilgamesh. There’s more to it than just wandering. There's a whole process.

Tell us about it.

I make a circle of flowers around the camp to purify it. And that tradition, making a circle to purify your space, is something that in primitive culture is still well-known and very well-known in neo-paganism. So that goes back 5,000 years, before recorded history. So I do that.

And I also leave out an offering, the same offering they leave out. There were two kinds of stones that were sacred in Mesopotamia. You’ve got a carnelian stone and you've got lapis lazuli. So I have a slab of cornelian and a slab of lapis lazuli. And I leave honey on the carnelian stone and butter on the lapis lazuli. That’s just an offering.