Even as young kids, my sister and I never hesitated to make fun of my dad. Many cheesy jokes and one-liners were met with eye-rolls and groans.
My dad's always been an outdoors man, a conservationist. While he hunted, I think it pained him sometimes to kill an animal.
Growing up, moose were always presented as majestic, sacred, almost magical creatures. This has been ingrained into Gilly and I since an early age. Dad loved moose. He loved watching them on TV, he loved reading about them. When the urge hit him, what he loved most though, was tracking them.
I remember one particular family trip when dad spotted a cow moose and two calves on the side of the road.
"LOOKITTHEMOOSE!" he said, hitting the brakes.
After pulling to the side of the road, he got out of the car and proceeded down the ditch.
"Mom, what's he doing?" I asked, fear in my voice.
My mom rolled down the window.
"Bill!" she hissed, not wanting to scare the moose further into the bush. "Get back here!"
Ever the limit-pusher, Dad walked toward the moose. The cow stood her ground. The hair on the back of her neck went up. Dad turned around and quickly crossed the ditch, walked back to the car, as three wide-eyed faces stared at him from the window.
"That was somethin', eh guys?!" he said, his excitement filling the stuffy car.
Gill and I (and my mom, I'm assuming, though I could only see the back of her head from the back seat,) rolled our eyes.
One summer day, driving out to the cottage, my sister, Dad and I came across a calf moose trotting down the side of the lake road. Barely bigger than a Great Dane. When the calf saw our truck rounding the corner, it crossed the road into one of the cottage yards on the lake.
Dad pulled a U-turn, and followed the calf down a driveway. The neighbors were sitting on their deck, having a drink.
Dad got out of the truck. Gilly and I lowered ourselves onto the seat, trying to be as invisible as possible.
"Have you seen a calf moose run through here?" he asked.
"Like it's his moose," Gill said under her breath. I stifled a giggle.
"Actually, yeah. We just did," said the neighbor, pointing. "It went into the bush there."
Dad got back into the truck. Gill and I looked at each other. Rolled our eyes.
"Ok girls, let's go get into the canoe. If my estimations are right, that calf is just the other side of Freeman's Bay now."
So off we paddled, the three of us, in the canoe, in search of Dad's calf.
We never did spot it, but this adventure gave Gill and I some good teasing ammunition for a few years.
This morning, I went for a walk on the Farm with my Dad. He had seen a cow and calf moose on the highway recently, and "if his estimations were right," they'd be roaming around his farm today.
Without fail, there they were. Super-fresh moose tracks cutting right across the walking trail and into the bush.
"They were just here," my Dad said, bending down to examine the tracks. "Chances are, we scared them off when we got out of the truck."
Without hesitating, I stepped off the trail and into the bush, expecting to sink to my knees in snow. The thick crust stayed strong, holding my weight. I looked at Dad.
"Let's follow it," I said. No eye-rolling. No groans. Just the excitement of being that close to a moose. I could feel her near me. (Ok, I know what you're thinking. Get a grip. It's a moose. But you don't understand. These are the creatures we'd chased in a canoe, received dozens of lessons about, watched countless TV specials on. And I was SO close.)
The tracks led us over a farmer's fence, through dense bush. Not a word was spoken. Well, except when I peed on my pants in an attempt to squat over a fallen log. And when I expressed my amazement that "LOOK! Moose poop DOES really look like chocolate-covered almonds! WHADDYA KNOW!" Also, that one time crossing over a beaver pond when Dad told me exactly where not to walk and I walked there anyways? That "sploosh" you heard may or may not have been my leg breaking through the ice into the swamp water. MY BAD.
I didn't even notice how long we'd been walking. Following. Tracking. Didn't notice whether or not I was cold. We were on a mission, dang-it, and I was going to see moose.
The payoff was excellent.
OK. So this last part didn't happen. But wouldn't that have been a totally AMAZEBALLS way to end this post? If you're thinking that's just a random picture of a cow and calf stolen borrowed from the Internet, you're absolutely right. GUILTY!
But really, it didn't matter that the morning didn't end with us spotting the (quite elusive, as I'm finding out) animals. Betcha think I'm about to get all sappy and say it was the bonding experience with my Dad that really mattered, right? WRONG. Through the log-peeing, wet feet, branch smacks across the face and dodging moose poop, we didn't do much talking.
But this morning, I finally felt it. I felt what my Dad's been feeling for years. The excitement of tracking a moose. Being so close you can feel it. Not knowing if the next turn is going to lead to the sighting of the strong, majestic, almost magical animal.
I finally caught my family's moose mania.
Cleaning the moose-poop off my boots, I can't imagine a better way to spend my day off.
