In the Company of Moose under the Aurora Borealis

View above our valley looking northward

It came out of nowhere. I hadn’t read any news about it, so I missed it. If we hadn’t taken the dogs for their last let-out, we’d never have seen it.

As my husband and I stepped outside, there it was: An Aurora Borealis

Never before in my thirty-three Novembers here in this mountain valley have I seen one. The northern sky was infused with hot pink, orange, magenta. Explosions of solar protons and electrons had spewed far south enough to bring us a celestial mural worthy of calming the most troubled mind and reassuring my oft-turbulent spirit. It couldn’t have appeared at a more needed time in the predicament of our troubled humanity. I craved something more expansive than the latest diet of our Daily Deluge.

I felt redeemed, in an oddly spiritual way. Sometime just after dinner, divine energy had floated in to offer the thought:

There are life events SO much larger than any one of you mere humans.

We followed the expressions of a new rainbow both on the ground and in the sky. As our dogs puttered around sniffing for the perfect spot for their territorial daily mark in hot pink and neon green lighted collars, diamond-gold flecks popped through orange hues above.

It’s a firehose of protons and electrons coming off the sun, exclaimed my scientist husband.

You’re taking all the romance out of it, I responded.

As we stood entranced under the fiery sky, a bachelor moose I’d seen two days before came into my awareness. He’d wandered down the ridge as though looking for a long-lost friend, then ambled along the game trail, splish-splashing his way across the creek.

When he arrived at his spot in the tawny tall grasses, he plunked his angular yearling body down. He rested in the cushiony safety of our woodlands under a less spectacular night sky, and I wondered of what a moose might dream.

The next night, he found grassy comfort alongside our dog Smudges’ grave. He rested the entirety of the evening, snoring next to wildflowers resting for the long cold months ahead. Unless disturbed, the moose here in the valley tend to bed down until dawn. Until we erected a fence surrounding our home for the safety of our rescue dogs, moose often slept close to our bedroom window.

He must be lonely, Frank said, He’s sleeping peacefully next to the barn. All I can see are his giant ears.

Like many friends before him, he’d sought out and found ideal moose habitat: Creekside willows in an open mountain valley. On many occasions, a yearling will find another wayward bachelor moose, and away the pair trot into their own wild sunset.

Just a few weeks prior, Frank and I were caught in a courtship ritual while out walking Teko with our newest adoptee, Maitri.

We had walked out of the woodlands along the same trails our new friend walked. But instead of continuing on westward, we were stopped in our tracks.

A thousand-pound female moose had come charging down the ridge to the north. Frank caught the scene as she dashed across the State Highway, galloping into the valley. She arrived a few seconds later, fur standing up straight on the back of her neck, nostrils flared and eyes wide. She stopped upon her own version of fright:

Two people and two dogs, one in a metal contraption with wheels, something for which nature had made no explanation.

She froze. Not unlike the Honda Accord she’d dashed in front of that had frozen when she came out of nowhere.

We paused for the safety of the moment and opportunity to invite in a semblance of clear plan for a hasty exit or a logical thought:

We’re all out here, feet from each other, under the vast, open sky. Nothing lying between us…

For no reason I can explain, my mind reached back to a recent moment down in Boulder. We’d pulled up at a stoplight behind a car sporting a bumper sticker:

Student driver. Stay back. I’ll take us both out.

My mind raced with the possibility of being taken out just as quickly as my good friend had been taken off her feet on a fateful morning. She’d no sooner stepped out her front door than a defending mama moose with a calf nearby took her out for four months of physical operation.

Christina now longs for a home in which no moose might suddenly appear in her yard on any Tuesday morning.

I completely understand.

I thought, too, of the mama moose who had lost her calf to a motorized event of humanity. She’d stood nearby, watching the scene and sniffing the calf’s still body, just before officers chased her away and loaded him into their truck. I thought of the moose I’d surprised back in November 2016 as I made my way into the woodlands. She’d stood in the shadow of the pines alongside two calves I didn’t see until she was charging straight for me. Our Lab-Shar-pei, Linus, earned himself a hero tag for coming to my defense.

As he rolled under her flailing hooves, he howled. I was certain broken ribs would be the reason for an emergency trip to the vet.

Fortunately, Linus emerged unscathed. But not before that particular mama moose had chased me and our other two dogs into the barn, where I stood behind a closed door, watching her watch me.

It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life.

In a flash of memory and instinct for the way of horses and similar-size beasts with whom I’ve become acquainted over the years, I decided this particular female moose posed no threat. Not to me or to Teko, unless he decided to charge at the moose.

But Frank clearly felt otherwise. And it was only when we both looked north towards the State Highway and caught the reason for her hasty entrance into our valley:

A magnificently-empowered, spectacularly antler-adorned, dark chocolate bull moose. Running right towards our fleeing friend.

A new reality set into the moment: He’s in the mood for love, and she’s not having it.

And with a welcome clarifying thought emerging from my oft-swirling mind, I yanked on Teko’s lead to pull our Bully mutt out of harm’s way. In my rearview, I caught my fleeing husband and our disabled dog running alongside in his wheelchair.

Together, we reached the gate and fenced-in safety in the yard beyond. As we swung it open, the courting pair parted ways behind us, the rejecting female leaving a rooster tail of dust along the dry trail. We watched as her would-be suitor trotted off another way, into the deep willows to the west, dark tush vanishing as rapidly as he’d appeared.

I thought about all of them as we stood under rose skies last night. I offered a silent prayer to divine energy to be with them and help them live well. I know that, at least for me, times feel as uncertain as they do tumultuous. Human chaos feels to be at fever pitch, concerns for living as intense as they are ubiquitous. Having encountered plenty who worry that the wild ones will do them personal harm, I sigh deeply, knowing that the truth is the precise opposite.

It is the wild ones who must be protected in these anthropomorphic, fascist-leaning times. Right alongside our immigrant community members and burgeoning number of homeless animals resulting from human chaos. I just hope there’s room under the aurora borealis for all of them.