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I
spent four summers in the remote areas of British Columbia, Canada planting
trees in forests that had been cut down.
My crew and I would drive out to an area of land.
Each person would take a section of land and spend one or two days
planting it.
This meant that I often worked alone, unable to hear or see anybody else.
One day, as I was concentrating on work with my head down, I heard a
noise in front of me.
I looked up and saw a moose standing about 100 meters away from me
grunting and breaking sticks and bushes beneath its feet.
The moose started trotting toward me.
Moose are bigger than horses, with skinnier legs and bigger knees.
As they tromp through the forest, their awkward appearance makes them
look quite silly. I
quickly looked around, wondering if perhaps I had accidentally come between the
moose and its baby. With no baby in
sight, I thought that maybe the moose couldn’t see me.
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I waved my shovel around in the air, but the moose kept on coming.
I had heavy bags of trees strapped to my waist and was surrounded by
stumps, branches and bushes, so I was unable to quickly move out of the path of
the moose. Just before the moose
reached me, I stepped into a deep hole that had been created by an overturned
tree. The moose ran past me, right
over the place I had been standing, with drool coming out of its mouth.
It ran past me and kept on running until it was out of sight.
I stood in the hole with my legs trembling uncontrollably.
With nobody else around, I put my head down and started to work again.
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English Academy