It had been a long day.

My old friend Mark was visiting from the lower forty-eight. We had spent a week and a half touring Alaska together, and man, did we do it all.

We drove Turnagain Arm, we panned for gold (and found some flecks!) we hiked a little of the Kesugi Ridge trail, we rode four-wheelers out to a friend’s remote property in Talkeetna, we picked blueberries, we visited Wal-Mike’s, we ate Kenai River red salmon campfire tacos, we saw the sunset over the volcanoes at Ninilchik, we took a water taxi to Kachemak Bay State Park, we hiked to a glacial lake and Mark swam in it, we packrafted out to some icebergs and I climbed to the top of one, we saw bears and otters and moose. Man did we see moose.

That morning we’d woken up in our tent at Rusty’s Lagoon, across from Homer, which is a beautiful place to camp if you don’t mind bears. We packed up our gear and stashed it in a bear box, then packed the raft the three easy miles to the glacier view. We played there all day with the dog and the raft, then hiked out to meet our water taxi at 6:30 for the bumpy ride back to Homer. Ravenous, we ate dinner, then headed north on the Sterling Highway. I meant to camp at Clam Gulch, but I missed the turnoff just after sunset, too distracted by the road work and the moose cow and calf munching on the roadside to realize what had happened. When I did realize it, I figured I was awake enough to make it another hour to Skilak Lake, so I pushed on.

Darkness came as a bit of a surprise. I’d been adjusting to waking in the middle of the night to find the tent dark, but driving at night is a whole different ballgame. My eyes were starting to get bleary and that warm bowl of seafood pasta in my belly was starting to feel pillowy and warm. The road construction workers were beginning to look like aliens and the reflective cones were sliding around in my peripheral vision when I spotted it: that beautiful triangular tent shape on a brown sign that means “home” in the summer. Morgan’s Landing. Okay.

I’d never been there, but Mark took charge of navigation from the copilot’s seat. We found the campground, mostly empty, and stepped out of the truck with relief. I stretched my arms over my head, opened the back door for the dog, and let out a massive sigh, ready to have the tent up and the sleeping bags laid out so I could hit the hay already, thank you very much.

The sound of hooves pounding on sod jolted me to alertness and I looked over the truck bed just in time to see a huge dark shape disappearing over a rise, maybe thirty feet away, with my dog’s fluffy white tail close behind.

“Shit! That thing was right there! SHIT!”

Barking, quickly receding into the distance.

“Daazhraii, c’mere Shoops! Hey!” I whistled and called and raised all kinds of a racket in a campground in the middle of the night, but the barking just kept fading. I tried to play it cool to Mark, and pulled the tent out of the truck. “He’ll be back,” I said, and snapped the poles together in the glare from the headlights, “he always comes back eventually.”

He didn’t though. After a while I couldn’t tell one distant barking dog from another. The tent was up and I was emptyhanded, starting to feel that vise on my lungs that means the dog has been missing too long. Mark had paid the camp fee and returned from the fee station, so I fired up the truck and backed out of the campsite. The headlights caught that glowing white plume-tail as I turned. The idiot dog was back. The moose must have lost him in the woods somewhere.

Daazhraii trotted up, panting and wheezing and grinning like a gargoyle. I stuck him in the back seat with a scolding and a hug, pulled back into the space and got my sleeping bag and pad laid out in the tent. I opened the door to let Daazhraii out so that he could come to bed, and he was off like a shot, slipping to the ground and around the truck.

“NO!” but it’s like his brain shuts off when there are moose to chase.

Hoofbeats, fading into the night forest.

“How could it be right there? Again!?”

This time we drove after them. We followed the sound of barking across lots in the park and down back roads. We whistled and called out the windows of the truck, but Daazhraii was in a different world. At one point the moose was standing on the side of the road, maybe fifteen feet from the truck, just staring into the headlights while the dog danced around her heels, barking.

“Should we… Should we grab him?” Mark didn’t sound eager.

“No freaking way. That thing has got to be pissed. She could pancake us if she felt like it, no problem. We’re staying in the truck.” The moose stared, the dog barked, I whistled and shouted. After a moment dog and moose faded into the trees again. “Damn.”

It was one in the morning now. We’d spent an hour chasing the dang critters and I was seeing stars. We were following the sound of barking up a backroad when the barking suddenly stopped and there was Daazhraii, grinning and panting in the headlights. I loaded him up and we drove back to camp.

“To heck with Morgan’s Landing,” I told Mark over the sound of the dog’s panting. “We’re not staying here with a crazy moose.” As I pulled into the campsite, my headlights picked up the shine of two brown eyes five and a half feet off the ground. Her ears flicked and she chewed a mouthful of grass.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s right there. Again.” Mark was staring through the passenger window and across maybe twenty feet into her eyes. “Did it lose a baby here or something? Why does it keep coming back?”

“We’re outta here. We’ll find someplace else to sleep.” I was half crazy with adrenaline.

“What about the tent?” It was glowing in the headlights. My sleeping bag was in there, or I might have pulled out right then.

We had to wait five minutes for the moose to mosey off, and we waited a few more just to be sure she was really gone before packing up the tent in record speed and heading out.

“Sorry you had to pay the camp fee for Morgan’s Landing and we didn’t even stay. What a waste. But that was crazy.”

“That wasn’t Morgan’s Landing, dude. That was Moose’s Moose for sure.”

At two in the morning I found a well-lit parking lot in Cooper Landing and we all crashed out in the truck. I wasn’t taking any chances.