Wildlife

When moose and motorcycle collide on an Alaska road

TOK -- The cow moose ran out in front of him, its four ungainly legs clopping along at top speed as it crossed the road. I began braking my Harley Sportster, initially a few car lengths behind Art, knowing that this coming to rest was so much more than a frantic halt by the road. It would divide our lives forever into "before moose" and "after moose".

The ungulate hadn't even looked real when it came out of the ditch and vaulted across the roadway. A big, brown, running moose and a big, blue, cruising motorcycle on a path toward each other, a violent impact all but certain.

I saw and heard the initial solid thump, but witnessed no more of the crash as I veered around my husband and over to the side of the road, dismounting in the eerie quiet as I shut off my motor. Unclasping my helmet, I ran clumsily toward Art, my legs covered with layers of cold weather gear. My plan: Evaluate my husband. Decide from there if I would stay with him or go 20 miles back to where there was cell service so I could call 911. Smash the moose on the nose with my helmet if it tried to stomp him or me. Evaluate Art. Evaluate.

"I'm not dead," Art called, laying prone on the road.

The worst had not happened. He was talking and I saw an SUV moving towards us. Thank God my second priority, getting help, was about to be taken care of.

Art tried to stand up.

"I don't think you should do that. Let's keep you lying down until..."

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"Are you okay?" said the woman in the SUV that had driven up next to us. "What do you need?"

"I need you to call 911."

"I'm on it," she announced, and drove back toward the town.

"Help me up," my husband asked before repeating the request.

"Probably not a good idea. Something might be broken and..."

"I want to get up. If I'm bleeding internally, I want it to pool in my legs. Please help me up."

I extended my hand.

"Are you OK?"

"I hurt, but I'm OK. Nothing's broken."

He stood up by the side of the road. The motorcycle was on its side, a discarded 900-pound toy loaded with camping gear and clothing.

Before and after. Before the moose, we were starting the final day of a glorious two-month motorcycle trip across the continent and back. After the moose: No bones are broken. He is standing. The bike, well, the bike is broken.

A truck came along the highway, its occupant pulling over behind the motorcycle on its side and asking what he could do to help. Nothing, really. Just being there was enough. We couldn't call a tow truck, we couldn't call an ambulance. Everything from now was waiting for help to arrive, which it did about 40 minutes later when an ambulance arrived.

"Where's the guy?" the first EMT to get out of the arriving ambulance asked, and I pointed at my husband as the EMT whirled, looked at the standing man who had just hit a moose with a motorcycle and asked, incredulously, "That's the guy?"

"That's the guy."

The EMT and his cohorts gathered around Art and shuffled him into the waiting ambulance.

I explained what had happened to the state trooper who came next, handing him my driver's license and fishing through Art's wallet, looking for his ID.

"The registration and insurance are somewhere on his bike, I think in a saddlebag," I told the trooper.

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We both looked at the bike lying on the ground.

"That's okay. I can work from the license plate," he said as he took a picture of it with his phone.

The ambulance disappeared with my husband in it, taking him to the medical clinic in Tok. After a quick conference in the ambulance while the trooper and an EMT looked for the moose and pain medications for the bruises began to take hold, Art and I had decided I would stay behind until the motorcycle was towed, then meet him at the clinic. The trooper disappeared after finishing his pictures and his notes, heading into the town to file a report and call the tow company.

Twenty minutes later the tow truck came and I explained that I needed to talk to my insurance company about payment but assured them it would happen.

"We'll figure everything out afterward," one of the tow operators told me as they expertly lifted Art's motorcycle onto their truck, secured it with ratchet straps.

There I was — with my bike and the woman who had first called 911, before returning to make sure we were OK. She gave me her phone number and told me to call if we needed anything, and drove in to work, where she was late because of us.

It was just me.

Before moose. After moose.

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During the in-between moment, from when I saw the moose until the point where my partner had said his first few words, existence had been concentrated in a nexus of possibilities. He could be dead, he could be brain damaged, he could have multiple broken bones, internal injuries, bleeding that would not stop, half a limb smeared across the pavement in a bloody track.

Our future had coalesced back into normal the instant he spoke. Now it included a wrecked motorcycle and some bad bruises, which would heal in a matter of weeks.

It seems there is some kind of cosmic truth which was supposed to become evident in those post moose moments, something about how we're supposed to love one another other even more than before, or appreciate each and every moment because one never knows when a moose is going to barge through and destroy our plans. Or maybe it is something about the people who stopped at the accident scene, and the intrinsic good in the desire to help others during a crisis.

None of those truths, however, need an impact with a thousand-pound animal to be recognized. In Alaska, according to the state Department of Transportation, there are typically 500 moose-vehicle collisions a year, more than anywhere in North America. "This amount can double during winters of heavy snowfall . . . Alaska has the highest rate of moose-vehicle collisions in the world."

But for me, the starkest truth is that, as I ran toward Art, I thought my husband was mortally injured. And selfishly, the great truth for me is that he lived. Which is cruel and awkward, because people lose spouses, children and parents to senseless reasons every day. We happened to be lucky. For an instant, any and all possibilities existed. We happened to land at a good one, and truthfully, I don't know why.

Putting on my helmet and starting my bike, I rode back down the empty road to meet my partner, watching carefully for moose.

Yonah Lempert Luecken lives in Willow, where she is working on her first novel.

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