Moose Excitement

This past Sunday, on a sunny day, my husband and I drove up the Robert Campell Highway which runs north from the Alaska Highway. Just a short drive, 30 kms - past lakes and ponds that slept under deep snow blankets, past swamps where pussy willows decorated the willow branches, past where I saw the great grey owl alongside the road last November, past Tom Creek where small pools of flowing water surrounded by ice glittered in the sunshine.  Nine snow buntings burst into the air from a patch of open ground, swirled as a flock a few feet above ground and landed farther up the road to start the search again for fallen seeds hidden amongst the dead grass.

We followed the ribbon of pavement that lay between wide snow-filled ditches that stretched to the edge of the forest. A quiet drive:  no traffic, no more birds flocking upwards, no foxes walking on the frozen snow in search of mice; then we saw the moose.

At the 24 km mark of the highway, an old gravel pit sits on the side of the highway and at the far edge of this clearing is an opening that signals the start of an old road that leads into a logging site, now abandoned. Willows and brush have narrowed the road to become a trail used by animals, and in winter, we see tracks in the snow from the old road, through the clearing and onto the highway.  As we drove by the clearing, I looked back to peek at the trail and to my surprise, moose were standing at the far edge of the clearing having stopped to watch the vehicle noise they heard on the highway.

"Stop, stop. There's moose there."

My husband backs up the truck and I grab the binoculars. "There's three moose standing there."

As Barry looked through the binoculars, I slowly, quietly left the truck and took photos from the highway. The moose ran into the forest and disappeared. We drove up the highway to our turn-around point, and on our way back, we slowed at the gravel pit to see if the moose were there. No moose; no fresh tracks . We drove onward, and after two kms and seeing no tracks coming out of the ditch, I had resigned myself to not seeing the moose.  We rounded a bend, and there they were. All three of them in the ditch heading for the highway. The moose stopped when they saw us, and we stopped to watch from a distance and take more photos. They seemed frozen in the snow. The spell was broken when a vehicle came toward us, and the moose rushed back into the forest. We saw them bunched together in the trees, but they seemed unwilling to move while we watched them, so we drove away.

This was the first time we'd seen three moose together, and the sighting was unexpected, which made the moment more exciting.  I feel the same excitment when an unexpected twist happens in my story, and I'm on an adventure unforseen.  One of the reasons why I keep writing.