Home Is Where the Moose Is

     Back in the late 1950s, a stone’s throw up the hollow’s road from where I now live, the members of my father and uncle’s hunting club built their camp. Financially unable to purchase lumber, they tore down a long-abandoned log barn and reassembled it as a one-room cabin.

     Not long afterwards, at the behest of my outdoorsy mother and a couple of the other wives, their men’s camp also became our family getaway. A twist of fate that greatly shaped my future. Because I loved that cabin. As a child, I saw it as my dream house, and I wished I could always live there.

     Though there was no denying the cabin was far from perfect. Even little enamored, enchanted me could see the abode of my heart’s desire was not just humble, but also downright crude, cramped, dark, drafty, and dank. Not to mention, devoid of creature comforts.

     I often got splinters from its unfinished floor and walls. Electricity and running water were nonexistent. A pot-bellied stove provided heat. Windows of cracked and wavy glass supplied the air conditioning. They were almost impossible to open and stuck when they did. Water came from buckets filled and hand-carried from a spring dribbling out of the ground a quarter mile away. One hundred feet from the cabin was the bathroom, a gag-producing one-hole outhouse.

     It also reeked inside the cabin. This was partially because of the long, musty flannel curtains printed with humorous deer hunting scenes that divided the cabin in two. In front of the curtains was the living, cooking, and dining area. Behind the curtains were the sleeping accommodations, two massive, handcrafted bunk beds. Atop each of the four doubles was a worn-out, lumpy mattress that sagged in the middle and loudly squeaked every time a slumberer shifted positions. The lower bunks took up almost the entire floor space, and the top bunks, which were reached by climbing a rickety ladder, were dangerously close to the ceiling. Even as a little girl, I sometimes hit my head.

     To top off the primitive decor, as well as to add to the bad odor, hanging on the wall above a curtainless window and between the two bunk beds was an old taxidermied moose head named George. There was nothing outwardly appealing about George. He had a crooked nose that wobbled when you touched it, broken antlers, cloudy glass eyeballs, and lopsided ears. Moths had long feasted upon his hide, leaving little holes and large bald spots, and his beard had been stolen by mice for their nests. What fur remained was dingy in color, covered in ancient grime, and blotched with a gray mold that made him smell like wet, grungy socks.

     Despite his shabby looks and offensive reek, I was fascinated with George, and I felt a powerful attachment to him. Mostly because of the tall tale my uncle told me about the moose. My uncle’s story about George went something like this. 

     George was born in 1840 on a late spring day in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, and for the first seven months of his life that was where he lived with his mother. He might have remained there all his life, but like many Adirondack moose, George’s mother typically travelled south during the winter months to warm her bones in the milder climate of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains. So that December, off she went on her well-trodden trek to finer weather, and since she was a good mother, she took her baby calf with her.

     Strange to think of moose as snowbirds. Yet even ages before George and his mother were among them, that is essentially what New York moose were. Stranger still to think of winters in the Alleghenies as sun-drenched and placid, particularly back then when winters were much colder and stormier. Nonetheless, in comparison to their native soil, a tropical paradise was how the Adirondack moose saw this land. From time immemorial, during the coldest months of the year, they visited these mountain ridges and valleys.

     In those days, moose were revered as sacred creatures. Indigenous people and many post-Columbian immigrants to Pennsylvania referred to them as “The Original,” believing moose to be the ancestor of all deer, elk, and other cervine animals. Especially after Pennsylvania’s moose became extinct, the arrival of the New York moose was considered the high point of winter. Migrating Canada jays, known colloquially as moose birds, heralded their coming. When their flights touched down, the moose were almost certainly close behind, and the Allegheny populace was in eager anticipation. The people could barely wait for the chance to be in the awe-inspiring presence of the formidable forebears of so many marvelous, life-sustaining, and irreplaceable creatures.

     Unfortunately though, the Adirondack moose were eventually hunted and land grabbed into extirpation (local extinction). They shared the same, earlier doom as Pennsylvania’s native moose. The New York moose were killed off by humans who either did not know any better, legitimately needed the moose for sustenance, or were in a feeding frenzy driven by an insatiable, destructive appetite for money. A common addiction and brain disease of our species that has always been the most tragic, delusion-inducing, and enslaving evil hell-bent on putting an end to humanity.

     Believe me. I know. I know from personal experience. Because I once suffered from that disease. Yet, although the illness did real and lasting damage, its infection never spread to the bottom of my heart, and in time, the fever broke, and my lost consciousness returned.

     I wish I could say I got better because my morality was stronger than my addiction. However, that would be a lie. What saved me were two stalwart defenders standing guard at the bottom of my heart: a ramshackle dream house and a dead moose. 

     But I digress.

     My uncle said each sojourning Adirondack moose had a favorite Allegheny stomping ground. For George’s mother, it was Lightfall Hollow, and that is how George came to be here. Just like my uncle and me, George was wonderstruck by the hollow, and he likewise knew he had found his true home.

     Perhaps then it was fortunate winter that year was exceptionally long. It was mid-April before the days grew warm, and spring returned. By now, George was nearly a year old, and in moose society, a year-old male “bull” is considered old enough to be parted from his mother and forge his own way in life. And that is what George did. As his fellow moose returned to the Adirondacks, George stayed by himself in the Alleghenies and made Lightfall Hollow his turf.

     George was in his element here, living his best life. He was alone, of course, the only moose in Pennsylvania. But moose by nature are solitary creatures, and for what George lacked in close relationships with contemporaries, he made up for with his intimate connection to the land.

     The hollow shaped George, and it came to define him. He belonged to the hollow, and the hollow belonged to him. He was content here. He was free here.

     That is, until one day when a wealthy lumber baron wandered into Lightfall Hollow looking for more land to buy for more trees to axe to make him more wealthy, and he spotted George. At this point, moose had been extinct from Pennsylvania for about fifty years, and the New York moose were becoming more and more scarce. In fact, it would only be a couple more decades until they too would be hunted and land grabbed into extirpation.

     This rapidly spiraling shortage of moose made George a rare find. The lumber baron further realized it made George worth some money. It did not deter the rich man that even the maximum amount of money he could conceivably make off George would add only the tiniest drop to his already overflowing, humongous money bucket.

     Money was money. And according to the rich man’s mindset, as well as the predominant mindset of the society in which he lived, money was the creator and keeper of greatness. Like many of his fellow citizens, including those much less affluent and even flat-out poor, the rich man was convinced the more money a person has, the greater their life, and the greater a life, the more deserving of reward is that life. A vicious philosophy that hugely contributes to enormous income inequality between the elites and the masses.

     By the way, gaining control of any addiction is tough, but it is exceptionally tough to take command of an addiction for which there is societal admiration. Sometimes to the extent of blind hero worship. I believe this adulation of the rich is because of two common misconceptions, along with a crucial contributing factor to a person’s financial situation that is rarely given any acknowledgement.

     Common misconception number one is that exorbitant amounts of money and intelligence go together. They can, of course, and not infrequently do, but in my experience, not necessarily.  Common misconception number two is that exorbitant amounts of money and tons of hard work go together. This too can be true, and a fair amount of time is, but not necessarily.

     As for the unacknowledged crucial factor, it’s luck. Some get it, and some don’t, and whoever gets lucky has nothing to do with either their intelligence or work ethic. I have known and continue to know a wealth of people who, though both intelligent and hardworking, have never received their monetary due. People like my parents, my uncle, and untold others who have enriched and continue to enrich humanity with their minds, labor, and love. They remain unsung heroes. While the ultra-moneyed are idolized without question.

     Still, who among us does not want to be looked up to and held in the highest regard? On these grounds, I do have sympathy for money addicts. At the root of their disease is society’s messed-up values.

     At any rate, the rich man who had set his sights on George had no interest in controlling his addiction. All he wanted was for his life to be the greatest and most meritorious of all. Consequently, every penny counted, and there could never ever be enough pennies.

     The rich man was insecure and needy. Moreover, he had stretched the human tendency to rationalize to an outrageous degree. Which is how he bamboozled himself into believing that he could give George a better life by capturing him and taking him away from self-reliance and independence in the wild to where he could be looked after and kept safe.

     Poor George. He was so inexperienced in the ways of humans, he walked right into the rich man’s trap. Afterwards, he was sold to a travelling circus as an addition to their clown troupe. Since not only was George, as a moose, an increasing oddity and naturally goofy looking, he was also innately intelligent and therefore relatively easy to train. While his unique face with its wonky nose and lopsided ears made him an even more comical sight. Hence, a clown is what George became.

     It was not that George was treated cruelly by the ringmaster, his fellow clowns, and other circus performers. He was well-fed, had a clean, cozy place to shelter, was regularly exercised, and received plenty of affectionate pats and even some occasional kisses on his wonky nose.

     Plus, it is inarguable that, if it suits someone and their heart is in it, a clown can be as noble a profession as any other. But being a clown did not suit George, and his heart was not in it. He was out of place in the circus. George belonged where he was most himself plain and simple. He belonged in Lightfall Hollow. It was home, and George could not forget it.

     An interminable decade passed, and George remained a clown. He might have died a clown, except that at long last the circus acquired a fortune teller and animal psychic. It did not take her long to see that George was horribly homesick. So homesick it was killing him before his time. Yet she also saw that there was still time for George to return to Lightfall Hollow and regain his priceless and immeasurable fortune.

     The fortune teller was kind and honorable, and she could not have cared less about any sort of reward for her decency. She freed George, and he found his way back home, where he resumed living life to the fullest. Of course, ultimately, George did die. When the fortune teller got wind of his demise, she claimed his body, and for whatever reason (perhaps motivated by some possible future use seen in her crystal ball), she had his head preserved.

     Which may sound appalling to some, but for me it became a good thing. Because many years later, the fortune teller’s granddaughter came to Lightfall Hollow, knocked on the door of the recently constructed, jerry-rigged cabin, and gave George, along with his story to my uncle. Once again, George had come home.

     That was the story my uncle told me about the life of a dead moose. Afterwards, he gave me a searching look, as though he could see right through me to the bottom of my heart, and in an emphatic tone of voice granted me this wise and intuitive counsel, “Now don’t you ever forget how to find your way home.”

     I did not. It took a long time, but in the end, I remembered George’s story, and I figured out what it was really telling me. I remembered the modest cabin of my girlhood. I remembered how at home I was there and in the hollow. I remembered how my best self lived in that cabin and in that hollow and that it was there I had received the priceless, immeasurable fortune for which financial opulence is a ridiculously poor substitute. I remembered all that I had lost, and I wanted it back. I wanted it back more than all the money in the world.

     So, I threw off my chains, left unconscionable wealth behind, and found my way home. Now I live there. Though not in the original hunting camp/family cottage. That cabin is still here in the hollow, but over the years, it has been through numerous ownerships, renovations, and expansions. No longer is it a child’s dream house. That stronghold of wonder is gone for me. George is gone too. When he was removed and to where, I do not know.

     My current cabin, although relatively small, unpretentious, and rustic, is not nearly so much so as the first, and it has all the modern conveniences. But just like the cabin of my girlhood, it is a quaint sort of house and far from perfect, but it is its peculiarities and imperfections that give it its charm, and it has charm galore. It is a stronghold of wonder. I would not trade my little, humble, curious, and imperfect cabin for the largest, most expensive, gorgeous, and perfect mansion money can buy.

     And above my desk where I write this hangs a moose head named George. Unlike the first George, he’s beautiful. Made of plaster, he is also fake. Nonetheless, when I caught sight of him at a local flea market, I could not resist him. I had to bring him home to the hollow where he keeps the story of the real George ever close and inspiring hope.

     What more could anyone want?