Chapter Three –  Moose on the Loose (Part Two)

When I arrived, I discovered there was a severe housing shortage and I couldn’t find anything to buy.  I signed a contract for three different places within the same week, only to discover each time that they’d already been sold and someone had goofed trying to sell it to me.  I always seemed to get there second.

I wound up moving into a house with a couple of other female pilots who were friends of one of the Inland pilots who had flown in Alaska for a time.  They both flew twin otters for another company, but didn’t seem to have airline aspirations.  They had lived in Alaska a long time and wanted to stay.  All three of us shared a house with a German Shepard named “Tootsie.”  Sweet dog, and a good protector.  She was much better than a burglar alarm.

Eventually, I got my own place, a tiny, one-bedroom six hundred square foot condo.  I qualified for a low-income housing loan due to the very low pay during the first year at Wien.  First year airline pilots are considered to be “on probation” and the pay was only $1,000 per month.

It was a great deal, though, and I finally settled into the very first home that I owned myself.  It was on the edge of a beautiful birch wood with a stream running through it, called Russian Jack Park.  I really got into the outdoors thing and my first winter there bought some cross-county skis.  I was able to start on my back porch in my skis and take off right into the woods.  I would do this sometimes in the middle of the night, when the temperature would drop well below zero and the sky was alive with northern lights.  It was beautiful, it was romantic and I loved living there.

My little condo had a wood-stove and I even cooked on it.  After I saw my first month’s electric bill, which was well over $100, a third the size of my mortgage payment, I pulled the circuit breaker for the heat and used my woodstove exclusively to keep warm.  It provided ample heat and more than once I had to open a window in the dead of winter to cool things off again.

I had wood delivered and bought a tiny axe which I used to chop up those pressed logs you can buy at the grocery store.  I’d use this for kindling.  In the winter, when I was not out flying for a few days, I never let the fire go out.  I bought a rocking chair and would sit by my woodstove, eating something I’d just cooked on it and drinking tea I’d made from water in the kettle which I always kept on the stove.  The snow would be falling hard outside and I’d never felt so warm and content.

I bought some ice skates, too.  I’d always wanted to skate outdoors and finally got my chance.  A friend and I went skating one day on Mirror Lake just north of Anchorage.  For the first time in my life, I could stroke in a straight line for miles on the black, pristine ice of this beautiful lake.  If you looked straight down you could see where the ice ended and the water began, a few feet down. 

Without the confinement of a railing and with virtually nobody watching, I got brave and executed some jumps I’d never tried before and didn’t fall.  Once in a while the ice would shift and crack and there would be a sound like a rifle shot.  I didn’t know what it was until my girlfriend explained it to me.  When it happened the first time, before I knew what it was, I “hit the deck,” dropping and lying flat on the ice.  I mistook it the cracking of the ice for the crack of a hunter’s rifle.

If there is any memory I have of Alaska that brings warmth to my thoughts, it’s of my many moose encounters.  Although they can be quite dangerous—especially mamas with their babies—I never had any really close calls.  Close enough, though.

Once, in the dead of winter I was staying with someone else in a house which had steps leading up to the front door.  At about 3:00 AM we heard a terrible clatter.  I got up to go see what it was, poking my head out the front door.

There was a moose with huge antlers halfway up the steps and there I was, eye-to-eye with him just a few steps away.  There had been objects placed on the rail more or less for decoration, such as a watering pitcher and some small gardening tools.  He had knocked everything off and into the snow below.

I was stunned.  Moose were sometimes spotted in town, but I’d never personally seen one on the street, although I’d seen the funniest picture once in the local paper.  It was of a mother moose who was lounging in a children’s backyard plastic wading pool to cool off on a warm summer’s day. Her baby was reportedly just outside the picture frame.  She more than filled up the whole pool and there couldn’t have been too much water left, but her air of contentment was unmistakable.

This moose looked at me.  I looked at him.  He must have thought better about coming all the way to the front door because he backed down the stairs while I still held his gaze.  I was ready to back into the house and bolt the door, but it wasn’t necessary.  At the bottom of the steps, he calmly trotted around to the backyard and made himself at home for the rest of the night.

Another time, while I was staying at this same house, I went out for a walk one winter evening.  It was very cold, but I liked walking in hard-packed snow and I just wanted to get out for a little exercise.

As I passed a house just a few blocks away, I noticed a bush out of the corner of my eye.  It was almost out of my peripheral vision when it moved!  I turned to look and it wasn’t a bush at all, but another large bull moose.  I kept walking, but the moose came out of the yard and headed right toward me.  Was he charging?  I didn’t know and I didn’t care to find out.

I dropped and rolled under a van parked on the street and watched the four hooves as they trotted on by.  Apparently this wasn’t a charge, but I was sufficiently spooked.  I waited a few minutes to make sure he was gone, then rolled back out and ran all the way back to the house.  I liked moose better at a distance.

I never had any moose encounters at my own Russian Jack Park, but one night I decided it was time to try something new and went to another area to cross country ski.  Anchorage has lots of bike trails and in the winter, they’re groomed to become cross-country ski trails.  You could go to any park, and there were many throughout Anchorage, and ski really nice trails.  Once in awhile I would go to another area to ski, just for the variety.

This night, though, I went to an area which was open and inviting, but wasn’t part of any park.  The snow was new and I made my own trail as I went.  I happened to have packed a tuna sandwich to take along as I intended to ski awhile, stop for a snack and then ski back.

About twenty minutes into my ski trip I saw a moose standing at the edge of some trees, just watching me.  Uh-oh.  Here I was in the wide open.  I wasn’t terribly afraid, but if he did decide to charge I was in trouble.  He wasn’t that far away and, through what inspiration I don’t know, I threw my tuna sandwich as close to him as I could.  He went over and sniffed it, then started munching, and I skied as fast as I could back to where my car was parked.  The act of a total novice, but I hadn’t been living in Alaska very long at that time and I didn’t know much about moose moods.  Who knew a moose would eat a tuna sandwich?  On whole wheat.  With lettuce.