I’m not so dumb. It took only moments to convince me that what I’d seen was indeed a moose. That moose—young, rackless and possibly female—did much to heighten my moose-obsessed state. The encounter was cited in my conversations and in all my letters. “I have seen a moose along the pond road.”
Still, something was missing. The rack. Those who see a moose and yet live would like a gigantic palmate rack to be part of the telling. Thoreau wrote that the rack of the male rises two feet above the shoulders and can reach a spread of up to six feet! There’d be no mistaking that for a pony. Yet, what would you think if, having lived on orderly city or suburban streets most of your life, you suddenly saw an 8 ft. 900 lb. bull-moose—in full-rack regalia—standing serenely beside Hardesty Park across from Joe’s Burgers?
You would think it was fake, that’s what. (I’m talking as one whose only education in moose has been an excess of Bullwinkle cartoons.) Metropolitan that you are, what would you think if you saw this great splendid eye-opener standing alongside the suburban Valley Parkway? You’d think: That can’t be real—it’s plastic. Further, one can take the metropolitan out of the metropolis and transplant him or her to Maine, but, even after a year, they will still think a bull-moose standing by the wild pine road beneath a glowering mountain is nothing but plastic. A giant Disney™ figurine.
And yet you’ll screech on the brakes for a plastic moose if traffic is sparse.
And the moose will turn about and move. Stun you with his crowned but awkward majesty, even while you sit like a figurine, staring. I watched my bull-moose’s retreating rump without a thought for the tape measure.
Introduce an extra-terrestrial to a woman in blue jeans standing beside a bull-moose crowned with great antlers (as white as bone), ask the extra-terrestrial which of these creatures is a monarch, and . . . .
Well, you know what the answer will be. One is a creature who lives off the harsh landscape and flourishes like a furred king, crowned with palmate rack. The other can hardly distinguish moose tracks from horse-hoof prints.
Exploring Its Treasuries, Its Upper Chambers
Driving to the Depot Laundromat yesterday, I looked up at towering segmented concrete stacks: the Papermaker. Massive stacks: three great pillars of warming and pollution. There were one or two more downstream at the Cascade Mill where I’d left Allen minutes before.
While our clothes were washing, I sat in our car and watched the sky surrounding Mt. Forist. On the ride in, Allen had remarked that the sky looked gloomy. I thought it dramatic—distinct masses of cloud, moving, against a background of gray, through gaps between mountains. Clefts and summits were differentiated as rising mists embossed outlines of ridges and slopes, usually more blended together in appearance.
Now here before me—Forist—the mighty double-humped pluton, having its own wisps, like thin shreds of veil moving up its stone front. Between it and Mt. Jasper opposite, I saw the only blue sky, a slit of Canadian blue where stood the beautiful gate. The heat was broken; clear clean weather was moving toward town through the valley west of Tansy Town.
I sat there, fragrant Depot coffee in hand, feeling luxurious . . . not working, just sitting watching that Canadian blue expand and heighten as wind drove shredded clouds through the pass. Above this gap, above its two flanking mountains were dark clouds, also moving. No longer stagnant, our weather would be in motion all day. Each time I came out of the Laundromat, after checking on clothes, the gap was larger, higher. I sat in the car thinking of climbing Mt. Forist. By the time our clothes were done it would be perfect hiking weather; breath and visibility at the top unsullied.
Finally, as I watched, great sheets of golden morning light began moving across the sheer rock face. Light traveled across its tattered cloaking of scattered trees, transforming them to green flame. The blue rift widened to the tops of Forist and Jasper; then the clothes were done, as if on signal.
Twenty minutes later I began climbing the steep rocky road that should lead me atop the pluton and give me, for the first time, its wide view. This stony track, the fireman’s track, was located a mile or two down that highway which ran between the great Forist-Jasper gate, the Beautiful Gate in mountains surrounding Tansy Town.
According to the helpful, round and stolid fireman of two weeks ago, this was originally a logging road from which the trail, a snow-machine trail, would diverge to the left at some unspecified distance up mountain. The logging road would continue on in direction away from the summit and become entangled with other logging roads on the backside of the mountain.
This old road—rough, rock-choked, difficult to tread—was bright with early light. I climbed much of it with a brook for companion, murmuring continuously over mossy rocks in cool shade beside the lighted road. The steepness of mountains is always a surprise to me: as I climbed, my strength seemed to sink back downslope.
I stopped, my vision arrested by a tiny movement on the path. Lying in sun was the blackened carcass of what might have been—for its little bush of tail and one tiny white claw—a chipmunk. The pulsing, or sighing, beneath taut dried skin made me gasp and pull back. The decayed shrunken thing seemed to breathe. Then, through holes in its skin I saw beetles moving, making a dead corpse appear live.
Its appearance of life had been caused by three or four curious looking beetles: two were black with yellow-orange stripes; another with white markings, somewhat longer, winged. Were they scavenging, or laying eggs beneath the dead skin? I could but guess, for I had no inclination to investigate further.
I walked on, wondering over my lack of scientific curiosity and correlating aesthetic desire to leave the thing as is. And my mind took a different turn; I thought of how the “breathing corpse” was analogous to a certain spiritual state: the human soul appearing at first in vibrancy of life, but turning out a kind of manipulative movement without a true, spontaneous and healthy spirit within. Of course: my interest in the carcass, then, was more metaphoric than scientific. Writers are always turning over rocks, peering into holes, tickling the back of someone’s knees, looking for metaphors.
I climbed steeply on. Uncertainty was building as the ascent continued with no sign of divergence . . . So disquieting when an expected course delays its appearance, especially in unfamiliar territory, and on the word of another. The postponement of expectation lengthens my perception of time, making hours of moments, months of days. Have I entered somehow on that tangle of logging roads on the backside of the mountain—missing my turn? Will I miss the wide view, become enmeshed in thickets? The origin of the term “bewilderment” has its kernel in this, being truly a part of wilderness experience. In woodlands, a mind seemingly steadfast and happy, but a moment before, is cast suddenly into disquiet. Have I taken the right course? Do I belong here? Or have I lost my way altogether—already? And writing is like this; or a move from Pennsylvania to Maine.
Delay is over; my ascent seems accomplished because this new trail is almost level, segmented by mud puddles: I hear a splash; look down, see widening ripples, rings. Clouds of silt rising in water suggest the burrowing frogs. An insect lands on the surface. I stand still on the green verge, watching. I would like to see a frog grab a meal; stare hard at the surface, at the bug; then deeper, at the reflection of blue sky. There are the green leaves of trees, the slow majestic drifting of a cloud, white cloud. Then, again, the bug rowing on the surface, the brown liquid of water. No frog. But a few puddles down the long trail . . . finally see a light green frog, limned in yellow.
Now I’m hearing a chain saw working away in the woods on my right. The trail appears to bend back toward the sound. But I don’t want to see the logger; would like to see no one on this high trail. Aloneness of woodland venturing is a valued part of the experience. I envy the logger his working in woods for this reason. He belongs here more than anyone, more than myself. But now the trail bends away again; the saw’s hawing dwindles, ceases. The place is hushed, and I am alone, walking.
On and on. Now, unexpectedly, the trail diverges. Which way to turn? My fireman said nothing of this. The right hand route is wide, rocky, light with sun. It curves away out of sight. The left path is narrow,