MAYHEM

Solo deep woods wildlife encounter…Steven Major 2026

These things happened in the Rocky Mountains, 7200 feet, late spring, in a remote area east of Hardscrabble Mountain. I had ventured there with a smaller trailer to photograph birds. The departures from normal started the second night just before sundown. A fifteen mph breeze stopped abruptly, birds stopped singing when it happened, the air remained unmoving until late the next day. At two in the morning, I woke and noticed water on the windows and went outside. It was unusually warm and very foggy, raining a heavy thick fog. Not raindrops, fog was slowly falling from the sky. It appeared I was inside a massive condensation event. Warm moist air being drawn to earth by a mountain of permafrost under me. Fog fell for hours. At first light, with no air movement, everything was as wet and heavy with water as it could be. All the tall grasses in the small field were leaning over on each other. Bumping a tree meant a brief sudden downpour on your head, otherwise a warm inviting blue sky sunny day. By late morning, I was wet to the knees from walking a stream with camera and lens looking for birds. I came upon a large grove of skinny vegetation. Walking around the it, I eventually found the stream and a place to sit. A large mostly flat rock was on the streams edge, and only inches above it. It was damp but not wet. I was able to remove the camera’s weight, stretch, then sit cross legged comfortably. At this elevation, an alpine grass covered field is surrounded by sharply rising mountains thickly covered with pine trees, not a leaf among them. Here on the stream, at the intersection of mountain and field, leaf plant life dominates. A grand variety of small trees and ferns, reeds, berry bushes, and many others fed from the stream. The difference wrapped around you like warm arms. I was sitting on the outside edge of a gentle bend. Upstream, to my left the stream curved around to the right, disappearing to a narrow point. Both stream banks were covered with leafy greens of many kinds and shades. In front of me, inches from my feet was the stream. Fifteen feet wide, a foot deep with a bottom of small brownish and lighter shaded quartz rocks. The opposite stream bank is two feet of reddish brown earth with an elk path set back from the top edge. I had noticed the path on all other parts of the stream that morning. Behind it rose steeply one of the many mountains that surrounded me, all covered with pines up to a belt of gray granite below a snow cap. Downstream, to my right, both stream banks looked similar to the others for fifteen feet then stopped. Growing up from the bottom of the stream were very tall reeds. Hundreds of them coming out of the water starting from each bank, continuing inward for five feet towards the middle. They were thin and round, medium green and very tall with a small white flower at the top. They were also heavy with water and had fallen onto themselves like the grasses in the field, creating a wall of green the width of the stream: fifteen feet tall and five thick, with a wide arched 3 foot tall window at bottom center. Perched on the rock, I was similar in height to the window so my view of downstream remained uninterrupted. All of the vegetation made the setting feel enclosed, sealed off, somehow special and intimate, and it came with entertainment. Sparrows were zooming in, landing on the bottom branch of a tree putting them two feet above the water. They would flip around, step off the branch, then float down while doing a half winged flutter to slow themselves before landing on a log near the waters edge. They would flip again, hop down that log, hop onto another one, then hop some more to the water’s edge. All of it was about taking one long slow drink, then flying off. Only sparrows arrived and each took the same precise multi step process for refreshment. I watched them all. After seven or eight, everything changed. A sudden loud sound of water took my attention downstream. Looking under and past the green wall I could see a great deal of moving water. White frothy jumping splashing bubbling angry looking water from stream edge to edge, and for some distance downstream. Immediately an adult moose burst through the green wall, took two moose steps, and stopped abruptly directly in front of me. His speed and force when coming through the wall caused an explosion of water droplets to disperse. It looked like a white cloud appeared, then a moose walked through it. He is well over eight feet tall standing in a foot of water, I am three feet going into shock. He is in the middle of the stream, parallel to and directly in front of me facing forward. His body is six feet away. He is blocking all of the mountain and much of the sky. The bottom of his belly is above my head. The side of his body is displaying many large uniquely shaped clumps of water soaked brown fur. It looks like a map of Europe. He is statue level motionless while dripping water from everywhere. After many seconds, he moves his head and neck sharply to his left and downward, centering it on me, then moves it in closer. The end of his snout is above and to my left two feet away. I am confronted by a blunt squared off mouth and teeth with huge lips and nostrils that have three inch black hairs emerging from each that are mingling with same growing intermittently from the parameters of his lips, not kissable. When the shock subsided, I realized we were and had been staring into each others eyes and that I did not know for how long or why. He was so close that both of his pupils were in the extreme corner of each eye straining to see me. At first I did not see them, only the giant whites of both eyeballs. He looked like a crosseyed monster ghost moose. Running down over each of his enormous eyeballs was a small narrow nervous stream of water coming from his gigantic downward pointing head. You and I would blink or use our hand to wipe water from our eye. Moose are hands free, his refusal to blink, to not see me for a brief instant underlined his focused unwavering high level of concern. I wondered why. Seconds later moose two came crashing through the green wall. Moose one had dislodged most of the water droplets so it was a regular monster moose crashing through a green wall situation. Moose two also came through the middle forcefully and stopped abruptly so not to bump into moose one. It ended up directly behind with its chest two feet from moose ones buttocks and his neck and head towering above and over it. After a long pause, moose two simultaneously lifted its front and rear right legs and moved both three feet to the right. Then picked up both left legs and did the same. It happened twice, the moose moved seven feet sideways away from me ending up close to the opposite stream bank, then froze in place looking forward. Seeing these behemoths move from my ground level position six feet away was completely astounding. All the commotion had no affect on moose one’s steadfast gaze on me. I found out why. Moments later, moose three, the last moose shows up. What’s going on here.

Enclosed, sealed off, somehow special intimate place had become filled up with moose. So much so that moose three stopped in the middle of the green wall with his head poking out my side and his butt out the other gracing downstream. The wall looked like a huge wreath with a moose head sticking out the middle. While both other moose were unmoving with fixed stairs, wreath moose was looking around with bemusement and expectation. My concern being what he expected may have something to do with me. Through the green wall I could see his front legs. I noticed the stark, though normal in young moose development, extreme disproportion in size between his legs and knees. I then realized what was in front of me: Daddy moose, Mommy moose, and moose Junior. Two, nine, and twelve feet from me. At least five of us if you include the tension. I had no go to behavior or escape. None of the busy conversations in my head had caused the words “that’s a good idea” to show up. I recalled reading that moose don’t bite people, they stomp them, and was aware of the male’s propensity for violence during mating season. I then noticed I was actually positioned between hyped up Daddy and Junior. Very not good. Concern grew, then Daddy knew what to do. He suddenly raised his head up to level, then turned it and his neck to his extreme left, briefly positioning it above and almost parallel to his backbone, then snapped it back to where it was focused on me. He did it to shoot Mom a look who was behind and on his right. His glance caused her to take two steps, putting her on the elk path on top of the opposite bank, in the same forward facing silent position. As soon as she started to move, Junior was right behind her. They both became silent and still on the path while motionless Daddy and his cockeyed eyes continued to judge me. With mom and Junior safe it appeared Daddy and I were now in some kind of big boy standoff. My new fear being a young moose dad could harbor ill perceived needs to display violence, even as a lesson for Junior, resulting in a serious injury or a life threatening hospital bill. Daddy moose then moved his neck downward placing his head closer and stared smelling me from fifteen inches. It felt like a poke, a challenge that seemed to require a response maybe to avoid a larger one. Usually such things are followed by some kind of conflict/friction, resulting in a winner and looser. Realizing the path it appeared we were on I attempted a diversion. I tried shifting time. Tried jumping from the poke moment we were in, past the conflict/friction part, directly to the winner looser outcome. Because he was a monster it seemed appropriate I be the loser. I pretended we had engaged in a decisive battle and he had won. I expressed my loss by making a defeatist wilting sound while cowering. From my crossed leg position, I slowly lowered my head and upper body and twisted away to my right as far as I could while maintaining peripheral left eye vision of his front legs in the water. If he came at me I would know. The looser sound started with a medium volume and pitch and gently decreased both to silence. It mimics the sound the popular Antiques Roadshow uses before revealing the new current lower value of the antique in the ten year old appraisal rerun you just watched. It’s a sound designed to express defeat and disappointment. I borrow for moose safety. After the brief performance I become very still, waited for Daddy to realize his win, enjoy the victory and move on. Didn’t happen. My eyes briefly looked away from his feet, when I looked back they were gone. Previously when walking in the water all the moose had made loud ker plunk ker plunk sounds. This time I heard nothing. Daddy moose had become top toe stealthy and I unaware of what was happening. Then from above, his lips and snout entered my vision moving slowly downward then stopped. He was now facing me from upstream five feet away. His lips began to ungulate, flexing in all manner. While continuing to flex, he again moved slowly downward, entering the stream till the water was up to very bottoms of both eyeballs. Again we are eye to eye. I’m getting a leg cramp from sitting still, crossed legs and skipped heartbeats.

We remain motionless while the stream moved between us. Small things came floating down. Sticks and parts of live and dead grasses and such. Some of the long grasses became caught on Daddy’s hairy head and wrap around to his front, irritating both his lower eye lashes. He starts blinking to address the irritation. More grasses came. He blinks one eye then the other, then both in rapid succession. There became a great deal of prolonged intermittent and rapid blinking. I blinked back once for unknown reasons. When I did, Daddy violently lifted his head from the water to a standing position in a way that shoveled water on me. Fortunately, by standing upright he was much farther away and his attention became elsewhere. From the stream bottom he had acquired a mouthful of light green iridescent jello like matter to eat. He began shaking his head slightly from side to side to separate the jello from the water he had gathered with it. As he was doing it, Junior perked up from the path with loud groans. Long, low pitched, stretched out sounds resembling complaints. Each groan got substantially louder. At the beginning of the third groan, Daddy moose swallowed his jello, turned, and stepped onto the elk path, leading Mom and Junior out of sight. He moved with a bounce and swagger as if leading a parade. Hs was.

I uncrossed my legs, laid down and unwound with the soft sounds of the moving water. Across the stream, a sparrow landed on the bottom branch, flipped, stepped off, fluttered down, landed on a log, flipped again, hopped down that log, hopped onto another…