A moose by any other name . . .

I just returned from the annual trip to our cabin in Calder, Idaho to open it up for the season. The cabin itself is a repository of the “stuff” that invokes memories, some of which go back to my childhood. Likewise, the journey there and back elicits innumerable flashbacks to previous trips. So, it was not surprising as I was driving up the St. Joe river within a few miles of the cabin, that I recalled a time about twenty years ago when Kate and I were returning to the cabin from a shopping trip to town. All of a sudden, in the bend of the road, we saw a moose, standing in classic moose pose, up to its belly in water.

“Wow – that was a moose! I’ve never seen one before.” Me neither, I said. We both got pretty excited with the prospect of breaking the news to “the boys” that evening. The boys being my dad and Fred who were off whipping the water in Marble Creek that afternoon in pursuit of the wily cut throat. It wasn’t long before they rolled up the driveway in dad’s pickup.

“Guess what we saw today?” Katie burst out the door. “A moose!”

“No you didn’t. It must have been an elk, or maybe a horse. I bet it was a mule.”

“No. It was a moose! I saw it. So did mom.”

“Have you ever seen a moose before?”

“Well, no, but I have seen pictures. I know what they look like.”She placed her hands by the side of her head to indicate the shape and size of their antlers.

“Well, your mother hasn’t seen a moose either and it couldn’t have been a moose you saw because there aren’t any moose in this area.”

There was much back and forth and mutual eye rolling on this topic for the rest of the evening and the next couple of days. I just thought that the boys were being stubborn along with another adjective that starts with an “s.” Katie, however, was offended. For her, this was the first time that either her father or her grandfather had questioned her knowledge or her truthfulness. Plus, she knew that they were wrong and that was equally disquieting.

The following day, I had occasion to drive back to Saint Maries, passing the creek where the dubious moose sighting had occurred. No moose today but I got out of the car to look around and discovered that the creek actually had a name: Moose Creek.

That evening when I brought this bit of evidentiary information forward, it was met with blank looks and a stony silence. So much for Plaintiff’s Exhibit A.

A few days later, the boys came back from an outing with Bill Carter, our cabin neighbor and the local game warden. That night at dinner, one of them informed the family that there were moose along the river, as though this was brand new information.

“Did you see one?”

“No. But Bill did.”

Now it was our turn to respond with stony looks and silence.
Several years later our friends Janie and Tony came up to the cabin to spend a couple of days with us. When they arrived, they were both eager to share their river sightings. Janie, riding in the passenger seat, had looked up to see a beautiful great blue heron poised to take off in flight. At the same moment, Tony had spotted a moose in the creek, off to the left of the highway.

Both were congratulated and, furthermore, believed. I couldn’t help but observe that it was a good thing that the respective locations of the moose and the heron hadn’t been reversed or else the story would have had a very different reception.

The cabin is not only the repository of the family’s collective memories it is also the origin of stories, some of which ultimately become legends. Occasionally, these legends contain unambiguous, universal truths. Hence -

If a man sees it, it’s a moose!