AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES
Christopher stopped dead in his tracks; fast and without a sound. The suddenness of his deceleration as we climbed through the aspen just above town on Johns trail caught me off-guard and I clumsily, not-so-quietly augured into a tree root while trying to avoid Chris’ rear wheel. He turned and looked back at me with a wide-eyed half smile and pointed ahead on the trail, where a moose calf was walking casually away from us about 10 feet ahead. Moose are widely known as the bad-tempered assholes of the alpine animal kingdom. They are huge, mean, dumb and dangerous. Junior here was the size of a healthy pony, and mom had to be lurking nearby.
Sure enough, mom emerged from the thicket, crossed the trail and carried on in the opposite direction. I exhaled, thankful that we weren’t about to be stomped, and we continued on. The trail looped around, climbed some more, then doubled back on itself above us a few minutes later. Which is when we encountered Dad moose, grazing in the same grove of trees we had just passed through. Shit. I generally try to give moose as wide a berth as possible, will always gladly retreat and keep a lot of trees or a lot of slope between me and them. So having two back-to-back encounters, with about the length of a car separating me from them, was a little jarring. Welcome to Park City, I thought. Pay attention, flatlander.
Meanwhile, having what felt like a raw and primal moment, I could catch a glimpse of the rooftops downtown glittering in the sun, or a chairlift tower jutting from the trees. That’s sort of how it is in Park City. You don’t have to go very
