Moose!

Tip and I were paddling up the ditch one fall day, well I was paddling and she was riding along, emphatically NOT paddling (I've pointed this out to her from time to time, that I "always" paddle and she "never" paddles and why does she think I carry two paddles in the canoe, for decoration?. But she just looks at me and sticks her tongue out. She also doesn't help pull the canoe over the beaver dams, not her "thing", I guess.)
Did I mention that Tip is a dog? Tip is a dog. (Keeshund x Border Collie x ?)
Anyway, we(I) had paddled to the top end of the ditch (c. 3/4 mi. and over three dams) and she had politely disembarked and patiently waited while I got the boat ready to go on the upstream side of the dams before reboarding, she's good that way. We stopped at the top dam and had a wander around for awhile, then headed back down.
We recrossed the first two dams and were just drifting along, digging the day, when we came to the spot where the ditch spreads out into a ten acre meadow, mostly grass, with water two or three inches deep, a good place to play "pirogue in the Everglades" if your fancy turns that way, and mine does.
As we sat there, having a smoke, deciding whether to go grasshopping or just drift on home, we heard a crashing/splashing in the willow thicket to the north. Out on the bank came the BIGGEST bull moose I have EVER seen in my life (and I have seen plenty). He stepped from the bank into the ditch, stood with only his head above water, then paused and turned his gaze in our direction, we were less than thirty feet way, in a tippy canoe, armed with a paddle. His antlers "looked" like they would brush both banks, I mean a *BIG*MOOSE*.

In the fall a bull moose has two things on his mind: being pissed off at ANYTHING that crosses his path, and nookie. We looked at him, he looked at us, we looked at him some more, then he swung up the other side of the ditch, paused to shake himself like a gigantic hound dog and strolled off across the shallows to the tree line. I think it was about this time that I remembered to breathe. During the whole incident Tip had said nothing, no bark, no whimper, nothing. Good dog.

Memories

Thousands of sandhill cranes (huge birds), rising from the shallows south of Wabamun Lake where they passed the night, catching a thermal right over my head and spiralling up, up, until they were dots heading off north to the Peace/Athabasca delta country, two or three hundred to a flock. Geese in the fall running south from a storm, high overhead, vee after vee after vee for hours on a fall day. White pelicans soaring before a black thunderhead on Lake Wabasca on a hot summer day. White winged gulls flying across a double rainbow silhouetted against a dark cloud after a summer storm. The river shallows between the North and South Wabasca Lakes turned white with thousands of nesting pelicans one spring. The bald and the golden eagles resting on the tree branches behind the Father's church on the Point. Hundreds of them, taking a break from their fish dinners on the flats. Great blue herons flying, red-necked grebes diving for fish on Pepper Lake, off the Forestry Trunk Road on the Eastern slopes of the Rockies. Three wolves dancing on the road to the Naylor Hills as we came around a corner, and disappearing like ghosts when they noticed us. Mere words can never paint the picture or engender the wonder I have in those memories, and a thousand more. One lifetime is not enough to experience it all.