Wild Moose Chase

Leave a comment

I don’t remember the details, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t ask permission.  It was summer and a seminary friend and I were going camping in Maine.  You see, Maine has always been my favorite state.  Not only does it have dramatic cliffs over the gray north Atlantic, it’s also home to moose.  I always wanted to see a moose in the wild.  So I talked a friend into camping in Maine so we could see a moose.  He was from North Carolina and hadn’t ever seen one either—moose are limited to the very northern states in the US, those that border Canada.  Like many seminary students, I worked during the summer, but weekends were made for Maine.  We trundled up into the wooded part (the largest part) of the state, and drove up an old logging road that looked like it hadn’t been used for quite a long time, and set up a tent.  We didn’t see any moose, though.

A few weeks later I was able to persuade my friend to try again.  This time we drove to Mooselookmeguntic Lake.  We stayed at a proper campground.  The very name of the place means “moose feeding place.”  We saw no moose.  The next morning we asked the park ranger if they we around that area.  “I saw two on my way home last night,” he said.  So it often is in life.  Things abundant to the locals are exotic to those from elsewhere.  I never did see a moose in Maine until my honeymoon many years later.  They are elusive creatures, large but shy, particularly around those “not from around here.”  Eventually my path crossed those of the majestic moose.  Mostly in Idaho.

An Idaho moose

What’s behind my moose obsession?  I can’t really say.  I first became consciously aware of moose as a teenager and I knew that we didn’t have them in Pennsylvania (there are still, however, a few elk left in the state).  And besides, Maine was my favorite state.  That was because of childhood reading—there was no internet, and books are amazing for the imagination.  I suppose my love of Maine with its Dark Shadows and rocky coast may have spurred my desire to witness a moose in its chosen habitat.  There are giants in the woods of Maine.  They walk silently through the night.  For those fortunate enough to live in the state, they may be common.  For some of the rest of us, at least, they are transcendent.

Nature Watching

Leave a comment

Whenever I travel in the northwest, I keep an eye open for what one colleague calls “charismatic megafauna.” You know, the big animals that are so rare to see that they develop a charming, if imaginary, persona. Not that I’ve ever seen much of it here. It’s rarity is part of the charm. My usual hope is to see a moose—something that happens every three or four years. Black bears are even rarer. Grizzly bears, which still inhabit this area, and mountain lions I’ve never seen. I know they’re there, but their agenda is not to be seen. My first full day here I was sitting outside working on an academic paper. My time off work is rare, and when I get a moment, even in the wilderness, I try hard not to waste it. I had the feeling of being watched. Not the creepy kind of feeling, but the kind where you think an animal might be keeping a wary eye on you.

I looked over the top of my book. Several yards distant I could see a head bobbing up and down. Then I noticed a black patch on a nearby lodgepole pine. It took a few seconds for the red head to register. A mated pair of pileated woodpeckers. Not exactly huge, but they are large birds. And since they are the personality behind Woody Woodpecker, well, I guess you can call that charismatic. Charismatic enough for me to put down my Ugaritic mythology and go inside to fetch a camera. Of course they were gone by the time I’d returned. I decided to take a walk down the track in a vain hope of finding them again. Once in a while charismatic megafauna cooperate. There they were, one going after ants on the ground, the other perched above pecking wood.

Most of our large fauna we’ve driven to near extinction. Humans can’t stand not to be the biggest thing around. The megafauna remain, however, hidden though they may be. An online site for this area posted a photo of a cougar snapped last summer. I’m not sure when the last time a grizzly might’ve wandered down from Canada, but since last November I’m not sure why they’d even bother. Even the moose seem coy. Animals don’t do what we want them to do. Those that we can’t domesticate follow their own agendas and calendars we can’t hope to comprehend. As they flap away I can swear these woodpeckers are laughing at me.

Moosechief

Leave a comment

The moose, depending upon which standard you use, is either the largest or second largest known land animal in North America. This aspect of the moose, as well as its general docility, has often spurred me to the northwoods in search of the elusive beast. Those of us with few tracking skills, however, often must be approached by the greater party rather than finding it. My trips to Maine have seldom yielded moose, but in my periodic forays to Idaho the creature sometimes makes an appearance. This past summer I spotted two of them in the west. In their ungainly way they are beautiful animals. Large they may be, but intelligence is not a necessary corollary to size.

Moosing around.

From about the 1840s, up to its formal passing into law in 1919, prohibition ranked high in the list of evangelical Christian concerns. A distinctly Protestant issue—Catholics still recognized that any tipple good enough for Jesus was good enough for them—the outlawing of alcohol was understood to be in keeping with the Gospels. Some groups even suggested that Jesus had been quaffing Welch’s, or the first century equivalent thereof, rather than Mogen David (the shield of David, after all). Latest research seems to indicate that fermentation was known before the Sumerians ever appeared, and we all know what happens when cavemen have too much to drink. Strangely, this became a religious issue along about the time Fundamentalism began to appear. But Fundamentalists considered neither the practices of Jesus nor the moose.

A story in today’s New Jersey Star-Ledger concerns a moose in Sweden. Known for their liberal social values, the inhabitants of Sweden are often presented as champions of free lifestyles. A moose near Gothenburg apparently had trouble steering herself after eating several fermented apples that had fallen from a tree. The inebriated moose lodged herself in a tree fork. The rescue involved bringing a crane to the scene to release the trapped, and slightly disorderly, animal. Such a story makes me wonder if prohibition should not be among the laws of the jungle. After all, the observation of nature often calls the certitude of many religious doctrines into question. If God prohibits alcohol, we might rightly wonder, why are there moose in Sweden sleeping off a hangover?