Who's up? Dog.

I have an all-weather dog. She's all-terrain too. On the one hand, this is awesome because I don't ever have dress her up. Raining? Fur coat. Snowing? Fur coat. Sunny? Sorry pooch, fur coat. On the other hand, it means I have to be an all-weather person. Dark and blowing sleet? I'll get another coat.

I like hiking and trail running, but my enjoyment doesn't ever seem to even approach her level of enthusiasm. While I huff and puff and struggle to maintain forward momentum up the trail, my dog runs way ahead, then back to me again, and off into the underbrush and back up yet again. For every mile I cover, she does at least 4. When we get to the top, or if I stop for a rest, she looks at me like we're going to play-wrestle right away. Somehow my leaning on my knees trying to prevent reverse peristalsis looks like a dog wrestling pose.

For the past few years, I haven't used the snooze button on my alarm. This does not mean getting up is any easier, I just prefer to sleep properly until it is time to stop, instead of inflicting a half hour of disruption on myself to start the day. Of course, while I fumble to find the floor and clothes, that crazy dog is pacing and yawning pointedly and panting at me.

I think she is more excited to get out when it is dark and cold and stormy than on a warm spring morning complete with early sunrise. I'd be lazier and softer if it wasn't for that dog huffing unapologetically at me each and every morning. Even on the days where I'm annoyed to be up so early, I can't stay grumpy for long; watching her bound into the tall grass or tear down the trail at full speed is a picture of pure joy. I suppose I'd start with a little more joy too if I knew I was going to get to go back to sleep for a few more hours when we got back to the house.

Hunting

I may have grown up in a little redneck town, but somehow I never went hunting. My dad came from the big city, and while he did absorb some small town culture, driving a pickup truck, learning how to run a chainsaw, and getting a dog, he never owned a gun. I got a pellet gun for Christmas one year and it has claimed a couple crows and squirrels, but always only from the porch. I wasn't allowed to take it with me in the woods. I might've shot my eye out.

A few years ago, a friend and co-worker offered to take me along hunting. He was going for black bear and I was welcome to tag along. Of course I agreed, so that Saturday we headed out early. We drove around on backroads and overgrown paths in his 4X4 for most of the day, stopping a couple times to hike through promising country. I'm accustomed to hiking, but this was different. If things went according to plan, we didn't want to have to carry a carcass too far back to the truck. It was a sunny spring day, so there was only snow where the avalanches of winter had piled it up extra deep and packed it tight.

We had seen bear sign (poop) all day, and plenty of deer all day. It was getting into the afternoon and we had just decided to call it a day when Marc suddenly hit the brakes and killed the engine. Way up the open hillside on our left was a black bear foraging for dinner. If she knew we were there, she wasn't bothered by us. Marc grabbed his rifle from the back seat, slid in the bolt and a shell, and lay down on the side of the road. I stood there not quite sure what to do, but completely excited. I'm normally pretty level, but watching him aim a lethal weapon at this living creature overloaded my calm little brain completely. It was all I could do to keep from dancing from excitement.

Marc had been hunting since childhood. He saw every animal that day before I did, and tried pointing out some I never did find. His guns were a mix of quality inherited pieces and quality stuff he had bought for himself. He took better care of his hunting gear than he did of anything else he had. He was also a dead shot. So, in my mind, as he lay there lining up a difficult long shot up a steep hill, I had no doubt that he would make it. He didn't disappoint. The bear made one mad dash in a small circle and fell still before the echo of the shot was over. I found myself arguing internally about whether or not it was okay to be so excited about what we were doing.

The bear was kind of small, but that is the risk you take with hunting for black bear. They don't change proportion noticeably from young adult to senior, especially from a distance. We skinned and cleaned it and slid it into a special sleeve to keep it fresh until we could get to the butcher. Apparently bears are lousy eating as steaks or roasts, but they make a wicked sausage. The pepperoni was as good as any I've ever had.

I haven't hunted again since that day. I enjoyed myself and would go again, but I was also shocked and even a bit embarrassed at how exciting it was. There is a primal part of our brains that has learned over thousands of generations that killing an animal is a really good thing because it means survival of the self. My primal brain had been dormant until that day, but I'm glad to know it is still there. Spring is coming, maybe I'll get back out there this year.

No spray

I have decided not to carry bear spray when I go into the back country. Hikers I know won't leave home without it, and many non-hikers have heard of it and think it sounds like a great, almost necessary idea. I won't have it.

I was maybe four weeks into my second season of planting trees in central British Columbia. We lived in a camp that was little more than a large clearing on the side of a logging road an hour and a half from the nearest town. Each morning we would load our gear into a covered trailer towed by a 4X4 pickup truck and then jump into a big 4X4 SUV to ride to the clear cut we would be replanting that day. The trailer would have an ATV, boxes of trees, our bags, and our shovels. Everything was muddy or dusty, depending on the weather and terrain, but always a constant shade of dull brown.

We had to switch blocks part way through one day, so we all threw our gear in the trailer and bounced up a particularly bad road to the next piece of ravaged earth requiring new life. We opened the trailer and immediately started coughing. One of the thrown shovels had bounced into the heart of the can of bear spray strapped to someone else's bags. My gear was immediately below the punctured can, now covered in angry orange sauce. Once the air cleared, we emptied the trailer. I tried to carry my bags without getting pepper sauce all over myself. We came to a creek, which took care of the worst of it, but after walking up a hillside to the staging area for the afternoon, I realized I had definitely not left all the sauce in the creek. It was burning my hands and my face where I had wiped the sweat off. I was seriously uncomfortable, and no one had a solution for me. Basically, I did my best to work through it, with that stained hip belt rubbing remnants of hot sauce marinating my midsection even through my clothes. I vaguely remember it being a lovely day and a beautiful spot, but mostly I remember spending the day mad.

During my first season in the bush, one of the girls had a black bear approach her while she was working. She did everything right, not screaming, though it was her standard reaction to most events, backing slowly away, not looking it in the eyes, etc. Since it kept coming, she unloaded an entire can of bear mace directly in the bruin's face at close range. Later, she said the only effect it had was to stop the bear from advancing. Once her can was spent, the bear continued moving towards her. Only the arrival of another crew member with another can of spray convinced the bear that he might not be that curious after all. This wasn't some garbage dump scavenging bear long used to human beings, since we were at least a hundred miles from the nearest permanent settlement. Just a big, curious, possibly hungry omnivore.

Next hiking season I'll be carrying a shotgun on my forest forays. It is the recommended practice for the forest service, and I have an idea it'll actually be safer than spray that expires, blows back and can be punctured. I've encountered bears before and never had a problem, so I expect that experience to repeat, but I'll walk more comfortably through the mountain berries if I'm prepared.

Bad Moose

I had been driving all afternoon. Driving from camp to town to drop off the crew, town to the farm to swap vehicles, now on the home stretch from the farm to my home town. Less than an hour to go, nearly midnight. I hadn't showered in a week and I had a phone call to make. Driving, wondering if it would be too late to call. It was a clear night, visibility as good as one could hope for. I still didn't see it coming.

I was cruising around 110 km/h when he ran out in front of me. They say moose always take the easiest path, including using the spot of light provided by vehicle headlights. I didn't even see a proper silhouette, let alone have time to hit the brakes or think about swerving. I remember the sound of smashing glass and having time to think "This is really going to hurt," and then it was over. I had crossed the oncoming lane and came to a stop on the shoulder. A little further onto the soft sand and I would have rolled down the bank to the tree line.

My immediate thought was denial. Maybe I was dreaming. I was probably still back in my tent having a detailed dream. Next up was amazement, as I listened to hoofs running on pavement. I think I even said it out loud, "That bastard got away." I didn't want to move too much in case I was hurt, so I sort of flexed from left to right. At this point I realized I had a death grip on the steering wheel and that somehow during the smashing I had managed to mash my right foot on the brake pedal. In relaxing my limbs, I realized I had glass in my knuckles, but they still worked. I also nearly had a major groin muscle spasm from standing on the brakes so hard. I decided I was not broken, so getting out of the now very broken van was a good idea. I could hear fluid pouring out from somewhere underneath, and I had visions of a Hollywood explosion, even though sitting here typing in the daylight I know that almost never happens.

Understandably, the headlights no longer worked. I don't even know if they were still attached. I went around to the back and was greeted by the sight of a moose corpse on the opposite side of the road from me, steaming garishly in the red tail lights. He hadn't gotten away after all. There I was, 19 years old, all alone on a quiet highway in the middle of the night with a wrecked van and a big dead moose. At least I was hoping it was all the way dead. Growing up in that part of the world you frequently hear of a single moose destroying a transport truck and running off into the woods like nothing happened. Or laying there stunned and then getting up and mauling the nearest moving thing. No one wants to be a cautionary tale.

This wasn't in the days before cell phones, but it was 10 years before I had one. Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long before a truck came by and stopped. The driver was only a few years older than me, also a tree planter. He had a first aid kit but no cell phone. I used his tweezers to pull the glass out of my knuckles and he offered to drive me to the mill that was not far away so I could call my folks. I didn't know if I was supposed to call a tow truck or the police or what, but I figured my dad would know. When I went back to the van to get my stuff, I nearly broke down. I opened the van door, and all of a sudden my heart was pounding and my hands were shaking more violently than I'd ever seen them. I didn't really know what was happening, but in the back of my head I knew I had a choice. I could let it happen and shake and sob there on the side of the road, or I could swallow hard and get in that man's truck. I chose to clench my fists, take a deep breath, and keep moving.

As I was gathering myself and my things, another truck stopped. He nearly hit the moose carcass as he came to a stop. Thankfully, he had a cell phone. I called my dad, told him what happened and where I was. He did just what I had hoped and stayed calm, telling me he was on his way. He confessed later to not being sure what he was supposed to do, other than come get me.

In the mean time, I became the hub of a growing crowd. An ambulance stopped by on their way back to town from another call. They checked me over to make sure I wasn't walking around with a broken neck before carrying on their way. A Greyhound bus stopped because one of the passengers was a paramedic and he demanded to make sure he wasn't needed. Then the police arrived. My dad had called the conservation office, but they don't respond if the animal is dead (mercifully, it stayed dead the whole time). "Call the police" they said. Dad didn't know if the animal was on the road or completely on the shoulder, so they sent a cruiser to make sure. Turns out, a dead animal not impeding traffic is out of any jurisdiction but the crows. By the time Dad arrived, there were vehicles parked on both shoulders, a police car with all the lights on, flares up and down the sides of the road, and me standing there with my bag of dirty laundry, periodically ensuring first aid enthusiasts that I was indeed okay.

I took a week off from planting to let my hands heal and make sure my back wasn't going to seize up. The insurance company wrote off the van, what with the motor off the mounts, the entire front end smashed, and moose hair completely coating the interior. That stuff was everywhere. My dad took me to the wrecker that week to see the damage, and we left without saying much.

I never did have that panic attack that nearly overwhelmed me on the side of that dark highway, but I nearly recreated the experience not two months later. I was driving the same stretch of highway in the daylight when the car in front of me suddenly slowed down. I was annoyed until a big buck darted behind them and in front of me. I missed him by barely an inch. I could see the blood vessels in his eyes, he was so close. I pulled over because I could feel that tightness coming in again. Strange that the closest call I've ever had came within a few weeks of my only actual accident. I haven't come anywhere so near to hitting an animal since, despite continuing to drive animal infested highways at all hours.

British Columbia is a big place. There are thousands of cut blocks and dozens of companies putting seedlings where trees used to be. The summer after my accident, I found myself on the same cut block as the guy who first stopped to help me. The world is a strange place.