I had gone flat. Nothing was wrong. The work was the work, and I needed to get my heart and my head back in the game.
So I went up the trail, because I believe, not feel, believe, that nature never disappoints.
The first miles made the case politely. The maples had gone full fall, orange and crimson across the shoulders of every hill. Higher up, the aspens were only starting to yellow, holding out for the first snow or a hard freeze. Beautiful. But I was maybe too jaded, too spoiled. I was looking for more.
Way back in, I came up to a spot where the last time I was up here something large had crashed through the trees without ever showing itself. This time, I found the rowel of a cowboy’s spur in the dirt, the little star that spins. Memory is strong, and this spot was beginning to have a long one. I brushed the rowel off and hefted it, a good ounce, and pictured it dangling from my rearview mirror or marking my ball on the next green.
About four miles in, at a bend I’ve passed hundreds of times, I saw a splotch of dark brown that didn’t belong. Color first. Then the animal. I stopped in my tracks, fortunately behind a clump of maples.
Twenty feet away, on the side of the mountain where I’d never seen one, stood a bull moose, belly-deep in dry grass gone to seed, looking at me, chewing. It was late September, rut season, when bulls turn territorial and short-tempered. Whatever it was looking for, I didn’t want to be on the list.
It kept chewing, lazily, a piece of straw hanging from its lips. My dog didn’t even look over, just wandered farther down the trail. I stood still, trying to sense whether the moose cared, until I realized I had no way of knowing what a moose cares about. So I eased forward just far enough to take a photo, one step from the maples.
This photo. The moose shaded by its own antlers, silver light on its chest, the shadow of a branch cutting across its shoulder. It looks like what it was: a picture taken by a man hiding in a bush.
Then I waited.
Eventually it looked away and trudged up the hill. I trudged the other way, quickly, glancing back to make sure I hadn’t spooked it. Clearly it had spooked me.
All the way down I couldn’t shake the image: the coat so dark it read as black until the sun hit its flank, the pale tines rising off its head like bleached branches, the steady chomping. Mostly I reflected on the look it gave me before it turned.
Bored.
I had come up the mountain to shake off my own flatness, and the most magnificent animal I’ve ever stood so near found me unremarkable.
I’ve met cow moose up here before. A few years ago, my wife and I surprised one near the trailhead and ran for the car through the snow, tripping as we went, hats and gloves everywhere, a full yard sale. When we got up, it was walking toward us.
That was fear. Today was something else, and the difference wasn’t the animal’s size. It was that I’d been dismissed.
Under the awe, I felt a gratitude I can’t fully account for. I went home with more interest in what comes next than I’d had all day.
Nature never disappoints. It just doesn’t care whether you’re watching.
I’m glad I was.
