A solitary moose wandered across Big Twin Lake last week. Numerous moose sightings are being reported around the valley.
During my years living in northern Maine, moose were as common as mule deer in the Methow Valley. As we drove around the primitive back roads that snaked through forests then owned by pulp and paper companies, we saw cars with Massachusetts and Connecticut license plates flanking the shoulders as tourists watched moose thigh-deep in bogs nibbling lily pads. We’d roll our eyes, complacent and superior. We were like Seattle residents in Pike Place Market, unimpressed by the whole flying fish act, unphased by the novelty.
In the road hazard department, hitting a moose with a moving vehicle was much like hitting a deer, only worse. Whereas the bulk of a deer tends to be about the same height as a car’s front end, a moose’s long legs make its center of gravity considerably higher.
When you crash into a moose, you are most likely to hit him in his legs, which vaults his body onto the hood of your car and probably through your windshield and onto your lap. (It never happened to me, as evidenced by the fact that I am still alive and able to write this column, but the reading material at the local Roadkill Café described the process in graphic detail.)
Once, driving back to northern Maine from western Maine late at night in a thick fog, the passenger in my car — a 6-foot-tall South African woman who knew a thing or two about long legs — asked “Why are there trees in the middle of the road?” It was as if a pop-up forest had materialized by magic — all back in the days before pop-ups were a thing.
As we approached the mystery forest, we realized they weren’t trees — they were the eight legs of two moose. My little Toyota Corolla could have almost driven right between them, the car’s roof barely grazing the moose’s underbelly. We didn’t try.
We took moose for granted, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t like them. When we saw a baby moose we’d call out “baybay mooz,” trying to sound like our French Canadian neighbors to the west. When our Outward Bound students wanted to let the canoes drift so they could use up an entire disposable camera photographing moose, we rested our paddles on the gunwales and let them point and click away.
We liked moose so much that sometimes we ate them.
After 18 years in the Methow Valley and only a handful of moose sightings, I’ve become re-enchanted with moose, and wow, this winter has delivered. A few weeks ago some friends mentioned seeing moose tracks on the Rendezvous trail system; the next night one of the trail groomers texted my husband a picture of a moose trotting down the trail in front of the Pisten Bully.
Moose sightings are taking place in North Village, on Witte Road, even right in Winthrop. Last week my daughter and friend were driving home from school and thought they saw a horse on the loose. When they got closer, however, they realized it was a moose and they took a video of it, which I’ve viewed half a dozen times and forwarded on to others.
And if I’m driving along and happen to see a moose myself, you can be sure I’ll park on the shoulder and watch it for a while, snapping photos, a tourist for a moment in my own backyard.
