All I wanted to do was get a nice run in to start my day. Thirty minutes of mind-clearing solitude. Despite the snow on the ground and the wind blowing outside, I bundled up and forced myself to get out the door. It was cold and the wind certainly wasn’t helping matters, but I kept going. Within a few minutes I was rewarded by the warmth of the sun. The wind was at my back pushing me along, and I was happily channeling my inner Forest Gump. As I was coming into my last half mile stretch of my run, I was looking forward to the breakfast and coffee that awaited me. It was then that I saw him.
My first glance was just antlers and my country girl ways said “oh look a deer". At the same time, my Alaskan instincts kicked in and reminded me that there are no deer in the bush. Standing in between me and my warm house was a moose (which don’t come into my village often). He had ambled along into the road maybe 10 yards away from me and stood there watching me. I swear I must have looked like a cartoon the way I slammed on the breaks. I didn’t get the chance to get more than a glimpse of him before I was running in the other direction.
Had I not made direct eye contact with the giant creature, I would have tried to take a picture. Unfortunately he was looking into my soul and that freaked me out so I ran. I put some distance between us before turning around to get a better look. He had disappeared into the bushes so I didn’t get a second look at him. There was no way I was going to risk going past where he had been, so I had to continue on away from him.
The disadvantage of living in a village however is that there are no back roads or any roads really that I could have gone down to avoid him. My only option was to run back the way I had come which meant I had another two miles to go. This wouldn’t have been a problem really if the wind wasn’t now at my face (I think my 9th grader put a curse on me..). This was not the way I wanted to spend my morning.
I grudgingly ran home and went straight to Chris’ house to tell her. My phone wasn’t working on the run so I wasn’t able to call her when I saw it (shoutout to GCI for having my back on this one). We went out to see if he was still hanging around, but he was nowhere in sight. While I did get a longer run in, it wasn’t quite the peaceful workout I had in mind. Never a dull moment!
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