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Sunday morning Mark was awakened by the sound of sloshing water. He didn’t know the source, but at first thought it was the guys in the other tent, shaking water jugs like maracas. When he connected the noise to reality – two moose walking in ankle deep water five feet from the door to our tent – he reached over and grabbed me.

I was, as he had been, sound asleep. Mark, determined not to let me miss the brown behemoths, grabbed my sleeping bag at my shoulders and shook me – hard. I thought it was Carl Williams, my roommate at IU, waking me up. Instead of, “You slept past your French final!” I heard, “LOOK! MOOSE!”

Encased, chrysalis-like in my mummy bag, I bent at the waist, and fell forward far enough for my head to stick out the door. There they were, the ponderous pair, now about twenty feet from my face. I looked at them, they stopped, looked back at me, and then ambled on.