The Awe-Inspiring Awkwardness of the Moose

Once, when I was riding my bike in the Alaska wilderness (I love writing that. It sounds as though I routinely ride my bike in the Alaska wilderness and on this particular ride just happened to see something noteworthy. The truth is, it was my one and only bike trip in the Alaskan outback, and it was five years ago. But just that one brief adventure provided me with enough Great Big Wows to supply my storehouse in case I'm ever feeling a deficit of awe in my life), I rounded a curve in the road and saw a moose standing in a stream. At first, I was confused because I saw this enormous form in the water, but it didn't have a head, and for a few seconds I thought maybe it was just a very interesting stump that looked like a four-legged animal with no head. Then, with a great whoosh, it pulled its head out of the water and there stood this other-worldly creature that looked like a committee had hurriedly thrown together an animal before it moved on to the next task on the agenda.

Having lived in Wyoming for several years, I had seen a few moose from a distance. I was a newspaper editor at the time and I had seen plenty of photos of moose, often to accompany articles about how some guy from New Jersey had gotten himself turned into tourist carpaccio trying to have his picture taken petting one of Yellowstone's moose. (I learned an important lesson during those days: Just because you've seen an animal for years on Animal Planet and National Geographic Specials doesn't mean its domesticated. Moose are wild animals. They are also huge. If they aren't huge, they are probably babies, which means a vigilant mom-moose is somewhere nearby. You do not want to run into one of these: Protective ain't the half of it.)

But I had never seen a moose close enough to really grasp mooseness. And then, I rounded that curve in Alaska and there was this creature, standing in a stream only two feet or so deep. It raised its head out of the water with a great swoosh and calmly surveyed the scene, which by this time included a very quiet cyclist about 100 yards away. The thing I remember most vividly was the green glop hanging from its mouth -- moss and other vegetation it had been diligently harvesting from the stream. It looked like a bale of spinach had been broken open and draped around the moose's mouth for effect.

Then, because it wasn't going anywhere and I wasn't about to, I began to study it. Honestly, from just about any angle, a moose looks completely impossible. Its antlers were so flat and even, they looked like they were missing a part -- a shelf, maybe, or a satellite dish. Its skinny little legs didn't look designed to hold up that muscular body and its snout was about six inches longer than seemed proportional -- although with moose, proportional is relative. I kept judging it by deer terms, then by cow terms, then by elk or horse or mule terms and found it just not measuring up. That dowager's hump between the shoulders, the aardvark nose, the muley-looking ears, that glistening sable coat getting lighter as the air dried it? This was one peculiar-looking creature.

Then it lifted its head higher and slowly made an arc parallel with the ground, looking unhurriedly from left to right, majestic in a doofus kind of way. One of Alaska's redundantly spectacular mountain ranges (they're everywhere, absolutely everywhere) formed a jaw-dropping backdrop, the stream cut through relatively open land, this creature was the biggest thing for miles around and it was all so beautiful I barely felt the need to breathe. I was completely at peace and completely happy and if I had died right then and there, I would have immediately rounded base into Valhalla, I just know it.

I stood there for I don't know how long, one of those liminal moments in which time recedes and you're just standing in successive slices of now, now, now. Eventually, a nagging thought started the clock ticking again: My friends were ahead of me and getting farther away by the moment. I didn't know what the correct behavior is when one is less than 100 yards downwind from a moose. As I was contemplating what to do next, the moose dipped its head under the water for another quick nip and I decided the time had come to exit stage right.

My bliss quickly faded as the ruts in the road became more pronounced and that mountain range became the next feature on my itinerary. I eventually caught up with my friends -- at the top of a hill, where they immediately shushed my excited burbling with an admonition that there was a fresh moose kill in the bushes just off the side of the road, which meant bear which meant that bear dinner was probably still a happening thing and we might be dessert if we didn't high-tail it. So we did; that chapter in my adventure closed and a new, more adrenalin-drenched one began.

But that moment is always subcutaneous in my mind and heart, just beneath the surface, fresh as the day I first rounded that corner, filling me with amazement, gratitude and an appreciation of my own spirit. I hadn't trained enough for this bike trip -- a reality that clunked in with a thud after about the first hour on the road. My asthma was acting up, my knee wasn't all that happy and just the airfare to Anchorage had taken a chunk out of my sparse savings. But here I was, hundreds of miles from nowhere. And right back there was a moose.

Oh, wow. You betcha.