Moose encounter

Background: One of the most fantastic things about the place I now live is that it's located right next to the trail system that webs throughout Anchorage. This means I can get both to my university and to downtown without touching a road.

Story: Last night I was biking home from APU. It was dark out and I peddled slowly so as to be able to follow the beam from my LED headlamp. Although most of the trail home is wide and kept up, the cut off trail that leads to my neighborhood is overgrown, covered in leaves and has eerie graffiti reading, for example, "RIP." Most of the time I'm not much fazed by these few hundred yards. If I can handle hiking for days in the middle of nowhere I can handle an acre of forest, right? Maybe it was the rain last night, or maybe it was the moonlight glancing off the branches, or maybe it was the rustling from the wind, but I was positively freaked out as I peddled on this last stretch of trail. "Only 100 more feet, 60 more feet, 40 more feet," I thought almost out loud. End in sight, I picked up my velocity.... and then two seconds later clamped my breaks. At the trail's entrance, not 20 feet away, two green eyes starred me down. Behind those eyes a moose's body shifted in the shadows and a full rack spiked off the head. I dismounted from my bike and began backtracking, one small step at a time. At this, the moose lurched forward, loping directly at me. I scuttled off the trail, pressed my shoulders into the overgrowth and positioned the bike frame in front of me. The moose passed, feet away, and continued down the trail. Heart beating, I mounted and finished the short ride home.

Moral: You gotta love living in a place where big game encounters are just as possible in the middle of a city as in the middle of the wilderness.