In Alaska, you have to pay attention all the time

By the time I got back with the camera and a long zoom lens he was
moving on.

Years ago my neighbor, an electrician, helped me install a darkroom in my basement. At one point he bent a piece of conduit the wrong way. When he noticed it, he shrugged his shoulders, looked at me a little sheepishly and said, "You've got to pay attention all the time."

It's a phrase I took as my own and I have repeated it many times over the years as I shook my head and examined a mistake I had made.

The phrase is one particularly to take to heart when moving about in the Alaska Bush. When there could be a grizzly bear around the next turn or a horny moose standing just off the trail as you pass by, you really want to be aware. Paying attention all the time is a matter of course. Even when I am splitting wood right near the cabin, I stop every once in a while and look around, listen for any noise out of place. That time I had the run-in with the bear on the porch I had heard a larger twig snap in the woods maybe half an hour earlier during one of those attention-paying interludes.

Deeper in the brush but antlers visible.

So, today I am outside cleaning up the garden, potting the rose and geranium to bring indoors and taking down the chicken wire that I use to support tomato and pea plants. All of this involved facing the house for the most part with my back toward the yard and the street. Around here I seldom stop to look around or listen. I haven't seen a moose in the yard in two or three years. Today I probably should have paid better attention.

I was immersed in wrestling a 10-foot length of chicken wire into some sort of form where it could be stored. When I finished, I stood up with it and turned around to take it to storage. That's when I saw the moose.

A young bull, still in velvet, he was nibbling at leaves in a tree next to the driveway not 20 feet away. He barely flinched as I laid down the fencing, backed away slowly and headed for the house. Mind you he made no threatening movements toward me and the hair never rose on his neck and I wasn't running from him. I was slowly racing for my camera.

Of course it had the wrong lens on it but there was no time to change. I managed to snap a few shots, but spooked him at least a little. He ambled off into the pucker brush and disappeared toward the deeper woods with me following carefully behind him.

That's when I started to wonder how an animal that big could sneak up on me that close without making any noise. It wasn't a predator stalking, it was a clumsy moose nibbling his way through the trees, but very quietly. As I think about it, I never heard anything as he meandered off into the woods either.

While it was a thoroughly enjoyable encounter, it reminded me too, yet again, that I need to pay attention all the time.