Hiking is Fun, and, A Moose

Tonight at about 9:00 Meagan and Jessica and I headed out to AF canyon to hike the Timpanookie trail, just because we felt like it, and it was too hot to do it during the day. Now, I have NEVER been a hiker. I've never enjoyed it, and actually have had a pretty huge and intense aversion to it in the past. Here is why: Hiking = Sunburn, hot and sweaty and nasty (not the good kind), being surrounded by ugly scratchy poky non-vegetation, getting dusty dirt in my nooks and crannies and bits, being outside in the sun (pure evil), being sore and exhausted (not the good kind), and not actually accomplishing anything at all. BUT. Since moving to Utah, I have discovered that hiking was actually not invented by the devil himself!! It's true folks! You can go hiking, and be, like, in pretty alive nature! You can go hiking where there is shade, and running water, and trees and flowers! You can go hiking for... FUN!

Before I got my heart surgery, hiking seemed like a double feat, because my lungs simply couldn't take the stress. But even after then I never really liked the idea of hiking. So I am very grateful to my dear friend Meagan for opening me up to the world of hiking again and showing me that I can actually really enjoy it. Showing me that I can actually do it. I've always been the kind of girl who finishes what she starts. It makes me itchy if I have to stop a project halfway through, or if I can't see something I'm doing all the way to the end to make sure that it has been done right. If I know that I won't be able to finish something in the way that I would like to, I don't even start it. This trait has sometimes been a fault, especially when it came to school work. Even if I was BS-ing something, it had to be expertly BS-ed, or I wouldn't turn it in. Anyway, tangent. Back to hiking. SO, a few months ago when Meagan forced me to go hiking with her and I agreed, I figured that I would at least get a good work out, and I knew I can always use one of those, and that I would be just fine when it was over and would probably still be alive. She assured me that the trail we were taking was only about two miles up (I had gone longer on my treadmill) and that the majority of it would be nicely shaded and possibly even chilly. Little did I know that when we got to that plateau I'd feel like a million bucks! The hike was so enjoyable, and I decided right then and there that I would like to do that sort of thing more often. It made me love Utah even more for it's beautiful mountains and waterfalls and green stuff! And that is the story of why I wanted to go hiking.

So last night, we ended up going to the same place that Meg first took me to on Mount Timp. We strapped our little lights onto our foreheads and headed up the trail. As we were plugging along along and chatting, Meagan mentioned that her mother had been up this trail not long ago and that they had seen a big moose close to the end of where we planned to hike. We joked around a bit about it and talked about how even though moose (Mooses? Meese? Moosen? Jk:) don't have big sharp claws or teeth like bears, they can be preeetty big, and have their giant antlers and hooves to smush people with. We got ourselves sufficiently psyched out, then basically just laughed it off and continued up the trail. Our plan was to at least get to Scout Falls before turning back, because it was getting pretty late, and we all had things to do in the morning. I felt like I could be okay with not going all the way to the plateau because if we said that the falls was the end of our hike, I could still feel accomplished if I made it there. Well, we were getting pretty close to the falls and kept weaving up the switchbacks over the water running down the mountain, and Jessica kept saying things like, "You know, it would be okay if we went back now. ... I think we should just be done, we keep having to walk through all this slippery water, and it's dark and hard to see. ... I don't know if we should go much further, it's getting to be a pretty tricky trail, and we don't want to get hurt." (I've paraphrased a little, but this was the gist of it.) Of course Jessica wasn't just trying to cop out of the hike early. She had legitimate concern for our wellbeing, and her shoes. But me being the finisher I am, ignored her warnings and continued on the trail. After the fact, it seems pretty obvious that Jessica was absolutely right. She had a feeling that we should turn around, and in stead of listening we ignored it and kept going. Closer, and closer to....

ATTACK!!!! Just kidding, we weren't attacked, but OH MY GOODNESS. Ahead of us on the trail, I heard a branch snap. These thoughts entered my head: Oh my gosh it's a moose! No, there's no way it's a moose, I'm probably just hearing things, or it's a much smaller less dangerous animal that will be much more afraid of us than we are of it. Maybe it's some kind of bird, I hear rustling above my head... These words actually came out of my mouth: "You guys it's a MOOSE!! No, I'm just kidding, ha ha. I just heard something move a little ways in front of us, but it's probably just something small. Let's keep going." And then... BAM. I saw it. a glowing point in the brush in front of us, just a teeny bit off the trail, and about a foot above the level of my head. We had discussed a little earlier that if we did indeed encounter a moose, or any other sort of animal, we would probably see a set of glowing eyes before any other part of it. I was only seeing one glowing supposed eye, but I did stop dead in my tracks to be sure. And then, out came the other glowing eye, I'd say about fifteen or so inches apart from the first. In an instant, all the blood drained from my face and my heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach. I was looking at what was surely a HUGE animal, approximately TEN FEET in front of me! Then came the antlers. Right into our trail. It only took a split second for me to shout to the other girls, "IT'S REALLY A MOOSE! HURRY, RUN!"

We started running back down the rocky trail shouting loudly and clapping our hands and trying not to slip and fall over the wet bits of ground. The last little ways we had hiked was going back and forth over the runoff of the falls so there was a decent amount of slippery wet ground. Surprisingly we made it quite a ways to the last big crossover with no one falling down as we hurried away from the moose, but then as I went to jump from a rock in the stream to the ground beyond, my foot landed right on... Nothing! I thought I was aiming for the driest bit of trail, when in fact there was no trail there at all! My right leg slid down through the brush to the side while my left leg folded under me to catch my fall. I got a nice looking scrape on my left knee and some cool mud splats, but we were still running from that moose! So up I jumped and on we went. The further away from the falls we got the less scary it seemed, but I was still SO relieved when we got back to the car. Safe and sound! (And with some cool battle scars to show for our adventure!)

So this is the lesson: Hiking is fun! And also, if your friend tells you there is a big moose in the woods that you are hiking into at night, and then your sister has a feeling you should turn around, listen to them! Or you might just meet a big moose, and almost fall off a mountain.

The end.