On Moose, Wolves, and the Fragile Beauty of Isle Royale

In my head, the moment lasted thirty seconds, maybe a minute. It lingered. In reality, it was over before I had time to really process what I was seeing. Four or five seconds, tops. It was my third morning on Isle Royale, I had just finished filtering a few bottles of lake water for the day and was returning to my campsite, still not fully awake, the sun still low on the horizon. I walked away from the shore and into the woods, a bottle in each hand, and headed up the narrow path that led to my campsite. The site was fairly out of the way — not isolated, but not easy to find either. I turned around the last bend in the path and stopped, not immediately sure of what I was looking at. An enormous, dark shape in the clearing next to my tent. A moose, grazing lazily from a tree branch that I probably couldn’t reach if I jumped. I stared as it chomped on a leaf, its massive jaw working in an almost circular motion. It didn’t seem to notice me. If it did, it didn’t care.

I don’t think I made a sound. Maybe I did, or maybe some animal instinct told the moose I was there, but in a matter of seconds it was gone, disappeared into the trees. In a few more seconds, it was out of earshot, the sound of its hooves on the earth fading into the background noise of the island. When it was over, I realized that my mouth was hanging open.