Robert Michael Pyle brings reading and film screening to EOU
Robert Michael Pyle, butterfly specialist and Bigfoot chronicler, will read at the EOU Library and introduce a free Dark Divide screening in La Grande.
Eastern Oregon University will bring natural-history writer and biologist Robert Michael Pyle to La Grande for two events that connect literature, science and the outdoor identity of Eastern Oregon. Pyle will appear Wednesday, May 20, at 6 p.m. in the EOU Library for a reading and conversation with Nick Neely, an assistant professor of English and writing, followed by a book signing.
The library stop gives Union County residents a chance to hear from an author whose work has long moved between field notes and storytelling. Pyle founded the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in 1971 and is known as a lepidopterist, or butterfly specialist. He has been described as the author or editor of two dozen books and field guides, including Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest, Magdalena Mountain, Where Bigfoot Walks and Nabokov’s Butterflies. The EOU Library says walk-in access is available to all during public hours, keeping the reading open to students, faculty and community members.
Pyle will return to campus Thursday, May 21, at 7 p.m. in Badgley Hall 102 for a free screening of The Dark Divide, the 2020 film based on his book Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. Pyle will introduce the film and answer questions afterward. David Cross plays Pyle in the movie, with Debra Messing in a supporting role.
The book traces Pyle’s more-than-month-long 1995 journey through Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest in the Dark Divide area, where he set out to study butterflies and explore Bigfoot lore. That combination of landscape, wildlife and regional myth helps explain why EOU is hosting him now. In La Grande, where public land and outdoor access often shape local conversation, Pyle’s work fits a campus that regularly uses public presentations to connect science, writing and community life.
Badgley Hall’s science-related programs and labs make it a natural setting for the film screening, while the EOU Library reading brings the author face-to-face with readers before the book signing. Together, the two events add another community-facing offering to EOU’s calendar and give Union County a direct encounter with a writer whose career has been built on close observation of the natural world.
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