The things you do for love

It seems like everywhere on the trail to the East Pole these days there is a story attached. Today riding out and passing one of those spots i was reminded of an incident a few years ago. I was living there at the time and had invited a woman to visit. She had never been to Alaska and in making preparations I kept trying to think how to ease the culture shock of moving from Philadelphia to the Alaska Bush.

One thing she was hoping to see was a moose, I think maybe even more than she wanted to see me. A couple of weeks before she was to arrive someone killed a moose along the trail. It was well past hunting season, so there was another reason. Sometimes when snow is deep they want to stay on the trial and they will fight for it. I once hit one square between the eyes with a jar of baby food and it still wouldn't budge. But, that's another story.

For whatever reason, someone killed a moose and then left the head against a tree right next to the trail. In the next few weeks i passed that moose head several times, each time thinking, too, about bringing my friend along this very same trail. But there was always some pressing matter and I passed on by. Then as the day approached, it hit me that this might be the first moose she would see.
Not the sort of sight for someone who thought they are cute.

So, one day I stopped. I picked up the head (do you have any idea what a moose head weighs? It isn't light.) Then I slogged away from the trail in waist-deep snow for a couple of hundred yards until I came to a ravine and I pitched it down the side. Pleased that I had done something sensitive, I slogged back to my machine and went on home.

A couple of days later, after the long drive from Anchorage with nary a moose sighting, I brought her down the trail and had to laugh out loud when I passed the spot. If she only knew, I thought. The week was pleasant enough and after that she went back to Philadelphia none the wiser. Incidentally in the week she was here, she saw 15 moose as I recall, all of them, fortunately intact and moving about.