The Life and Times of the Plume

What is it about moose in spring?  We call them “March Moose” around here.  I know.  That’s tremendously clever of us.  However, if you’ve ever run into a cow moose in the spring you probably know how insane they can be.  I ran into one tonight, while out gallivanting with the dogs on Gibson Jack (which is, to be sure, as pretty as anywhere — look at that wonderful view behind me in the above image!  Melt your heart and make your soul bones chatter).  That moose.  That moose!  Meeting her was a hot mess and I’m glad we all survived.  She charged me not once, not twice, but six times.  We were all pinned in place on a treed slope and I had to continuously howl at the dogs to get away from me and to run for the forest — ooh, she wanted to stomp them into smithereens.  She was growling at us!  Have you heard a moose growl?  It’s an unearthly sound.  Fortunately, I had a handful of stout fir trees around me and I ducked behind a trunk or two when she opened up her can of crazy, again and again and again.  She was close enough for me to pet a couple of times.  Finally, right before she charged me a seventh time, I had about enough and I charged HER.  I’m not joking, I really did.  The little girl in the woods in red corduroy pants waving her arms and hooting like a hyperventilating owl, that was me.  It was a purely reflexive response, not premeditated in any way so I am very glad the antic was successful.  I don’t recommend aggressively chasing a cow moose in springtime but I was going to be up there all night long and a dog was going to get squashed if I didn’t fight back and chase her off with my blond hair waving like medusa snakes in the breeze and my scrawny limbs spinning like windmills.  It was madness but it worked.  That moose took to the trees up slope of us, I hollered for the dogs to get on ahead of me, made sure we had Penelope and we galloped like heck down the mountain.  Back at the trailhead, we opted to head up the mountain on the trail opposite that dang blasted moose and boy howdy, it was one of those springtime nights that only Idaho knows how to do.  The birds were singing out their alleluias, the creek whistling show tunes, the aspen poofing with green fizz, and the grass turning shaggy beneath my feet.

Tater Tot found pheasant and they shot across the valley like rockets, cackling and streaming their tail feathers through the pink of dusk.

The balsam root is just starting to bloom here and patches of yellow grace the hillsides like sonnets woven with love ballads.  I would lay down and play “he loves me, he loves me not” with these simple yellow beauties but I know Robert loves me, I’m sure of it…and there’s the issue of ticks (get your dogs oiled up, people).  I still took my sweet old time photographing a few patches for you.  Balsam root is so merry and utterly irresistible.  A true harbinger of summer.

It snowed this morning.  I stepped out of the house, first thing, to grab some cat food from the garage and noticed it was nippy out.  By the time I was back in the kitchen setting the kettle on the stove top, the sky opened up quietly and the flakes began their gentle descent.  It’s ridiculously beautiful here, as a result.  Fresh white caps on the mountains, conifer stands laced with the residue of the squall, the last of winter pressed up against the green turning and the green is radical, rule breaking, irrepressible in every way.  Spring is a sweet old badass that pushes on no matter what, a trooper bound to the no-nonsense orbit of our planet, bound to the laws of the universe!  Oh, she’s a stickler for the rules.

Onward, upward, forever the bloom, forever the sun, forever these long days trailing into the staccato of short nights.