As close as we got |
Anything huge and brown in the woods garnered a second look. We spotted scores of toppled trees, nurse logs, moss-draped rocks and even a possible beaver dam. More than 1,000 miles, most through heavily treed wilderness, and neither of us sighted a moose.
Picturesque and not an ungulate in sight. |
For eight days of North Country, the only moose we witnessed stood in the Isle Royale visitor center – a skeleton assembled next to a famous male wolf restored by taxidermy
I flipped past plenty of moose captured in a book loaned to me by the Mangy Moose Hotel’s owners, The Wolves of Isle Royale. The photos taken by researchers were unsparing and graphic – wolves stalking moose, moose kills and wolves dead from malnutrition, among others. In winter, the isle is a laboratory for observing the two species without human involvement.
This doesn't count either. |
Moose don’t need to respect international borders. If anything, our odds seemed better in Canada. But the same issues reared up repeatedly. The Lake Superior, Isle Royale and Thunder Bay shorelines caused problems. In many spots the terrain jutted abruptly from the water at a grade too steep for large mammals. Despite its serene waters, no creatures beyond chipmunks bothered with the shore of Sleeping Giant’s Lake Mary Louise.
Different country, same problem. |
In Ontario, Sleeping Giant Provincial Park offered the best opportunity to spot wildlife. The protected peninsula not only counts moose among its fauna, but black bear, gray wolf, coyote and even Canadian lynx. Some deer grazed in the evening golden hour at Silver Islet.
Leaving the North Shore Scenic Drive to plunge into the interior posed new prospects. Northeast Minnesota’s millions of unspoiled acres host a large moose population, but more places to hide and a healthy wolf population throughout the Superior National Forest.
Minnesota routes abandoned traffic and after a point, pavement for nearly 50 miles. The lack of people emboldened us to hope for an encounter. National forest and state forest, then isolated communities, farm country on higher ground in the Iron Range– then 24 hours of driving rain. Nothing would emerge from the forest during that torrent, even on the cusp of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area. The rain followed us into Duluth the next day, moose out of our minds.
As the hills faded and we resumed the flat crossing to the Twin Cities, Nancy and I scouted every copse, every lake, stream and corn field, desperate for one glimpse, any glimpse. We would have settled for the rump.
You already know what we found.
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