More about the moose

Thought you might want to know why I brought up a moose:


Announcements June 14

Last minute announcements, that is. In a few hours I'm heading out of this hot New York to take a cool cruise up the coast of Alaska. I haven't seen it since I was there on Statehood Day, 1959, and I'm curious to see how it's changed. This time around I won't be bouncing up the gravel washboard Alaska Highway in an old panel truck, camping out on my own private adventure in campgrounds that didn't get dark until 11 pm. (In case anyone wants to know how to find the time to finish Proust, that's how.) My big brother (who couldn't go back then) has been waiting a long time for his part of our childhood dream to come true, and now I've accepted his invitation to join him on a cruise ship 50 years after my first visit. I think it will be quite a trip.

I have no doubt that Alaska's still as beautiful as ever, but I'm certain it has changed. I remember standing on the street in Haines, Alaska - a little village we'd settled down in because we were tired of driving, which is located at the end of one branch of the Alaska Highway and was the only way to get the ferry to Juneau (the capitol at the time).

One afternoon we were standing with a handful of other locals on the very short main street, watching the only notable event in town that day: the arrival of the latest ferry. We gazed quietly at the row of cars that lined the road and curled up and around a short ramp on to the dock, waiting to board. The sun was shining (well, the sun was always shining, day and night, because it was August), the sky was blue, and the ship had brought 'boat eggs' (which meant they were about 6 weeks old which, for some reason, was considered a fine thing), so some people murmered a word or two about how nice the next day's breakfast would be when suddenly we heard a crash of brush and a large moose with a big rack of horns leaped out of the woods across the street right up onto the ramp of the dock and landed loudly and heavily next to the line of cars.

He was not happy to be there. He snorted, half turned, reared up, and, finding a space to exit, jumped off the ramp and landed on the roof of a hapless car stopped five feet below. All four of his hooves punched through the roof (amazingly no one was hurt) which made the moose *really* cranky. We watched, frozen, mouths open, as he wrenched each leg out, one by one, between the terrified faces of the car's occupants, wobbled on the roof of the car, bellowed very loudly, lept on to the hood (I didn't see if he did any damage there, but he was a big moose, so he couldn't have done much good) flew off sideways to gallop right past us and down the main road, throwing his head and snorting indignance as the strollers further down the road carefully backed out of his way.

It was quiet still, for a few moments. Someone noticed that our mouths were hanging open and said amiably, "You don't want to get in the way of a piss-offed moose," by way of explanation, and that was that.

That was in 1959. Now it's 2008. I'm kind of hoping some moose will cavort around when we pull into the docks of the towns on the cruise because I'd really like to see it all over again from a different angle this time. But I'm not counting on it.

Anyway, I did have some announcements, and that wasn't really one of them...