Wild Spokane

   

    I had a bad case of cabin fever. For days Spokane had been cloaked in a dense and heavy winter fog and I’d been buried in the details of a frustrating project that at times seemed as though it would never be wrapped up. I’d been stuck in the house for too long, with only short walks to break the monotony and I needed some kind of distraction. 

    Finally, fed up, I closed my computer, put on my raincoat and boots and clipped the leash to my puppy’s soft harness. We walked out of the front door and by habit turned at the corner in the direction of the park. Mantito Park, this 100-year-old place of gardens and meadows and meandering paths, is where I go when I need respite.  
      
    The fog had deepened with the twilight, turning into a soft rain that fell on my umbrella and settled onto the puppy’s thick curly coat like a jeweled net of glittering raindrops.    

    The windows of the houses we passed on our way glowed and I could see people moving in rooms as they settled in for the evening. They looked like characters in a silent play.

    The dense shrubbery around the pathway of the entrance to the formal garden was blurred by the mist, giving the place a mysterious feel. At that moment I happened to glance up into the low branches of one of the tall trees that line the property and looked right into the wide unblinking eyes of a barred owl as he sat watching me. I stopped in my tracks and for a moment we stared at one another. Then, as if to dismiss me and my silly dog, he turned away and gazed off into the distance.

    He was there watching for a meal and I was just ambling with no particular purpose. His mind was on mouse or rabbit for dinner, prey I’d probably sent scurrying away as I approached. Mine was on work deadlines and family matters and a million other things. And yet, for a moment, our worlds had intersected. 

    Manito Park, for all its groomed and carefully tended elegance, is still— at heart—a wild place. I often see owls and hawks and eagles sweeping over and around the park, their raptor eyes trained on the grassy meadows, scanning for prey. Sometimes I stumble onto a pile of torn feathers and stained snow giving evidence of a meal. I see the tracks of raccoons and the lingering scent of foraging skunks and a large flock of wild turkeys roams the place, parading across neighborhood streets and drawing onlookers as they stroll. 

    In the past there have been wilder visitors, like bears or mountain lions, and as if to prove the point, as I followed the path I noticed what I assumed was an off-leash dog—a particular pet peeve—standing beside one of the shadowy trees at the edge of the meadow. The man and woman on the path ahead of me walked right past the large leggy creature without seeing it but I pulled up, not wanting to encounter a strange animal, especially with a young puppy just learning to navigate the world on a leash. 

    I turned to take another route home and was almost there before it dawned on me that what I’d seen wasn’t a dog at all. Something that big, with legs like that, had to have been a moose. They still wander the park from time to time and sightings are not all that unusual.

    Still thinking about the owl and the moose, noticing the gauzy moon just rising in the east, I walked back to my own house--its windows bright and warm in the chilly gloom--and the puppy and I stepped in out of the cold and damp. We’d had our walk, our exercise, and our brief taste of the wild, and it was enough. The puppy went back to his basket and I went back to my work. And the moon continued its slow climb behind the curtain of the thick wet sky.