John Woodhouse Audubon:
Servus alces, Moose Deer. Old male & young (1845-48)
From: The viviparous quadrupeds of North America

Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. "Servus alces, Moose Deer. Old male & young." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed August 20, 2025. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/38998bd0-c6bd-012f-2ebf-58d385a7bc34

"I will remain satisfied having recalibrated the meaning of a truly happy birthday celebration."

My birthday brought a flood of well-wishes exhorting me to have the best birthday ever. (Thanks to each and every sender!) I'm uncertain if it stands in anyone's power to bestow a perfect birthday on anyone, especially themselves, but I took the wishes with the spirit in which they were given and set about doing my level best to celebrate a happy, if not ecstatic, one. It helped that The Muse and I were mid-toodle, not quite halfway home from some serious roaming. Novelty must be one of the better ways to ensure happiness, for discovery seems to be the sole essential element of true joy for me. I've already done every one of the more traditional and predictable sorts of birthday celebrations: cake, ice cream, party, presents. None of these elements seemed very likely to emerge from my context this year.

We were near Devil's Tower, in the Black Hills region of Eastern Wyoming, so we began my birthday celebration by circumnavigating that remarkable edifice. It was one of those National Park kinds of mornings, cool and promising hot, as we parked the Schooner and started our walk. Few visitors were up and out that early, so the hiking trail held just a smattering of others. The walk proved to be a perfect beginning, a genuine leg-stretcher without much exertion. The Muse bought a Christmas tree ornament in the gift shop, and we headed West.

The freeway (I-90) through that district is posted at an eighty miles per hour speed limit, but the road surface seems much better suited to a maximum of perhaps sixty-five. The soils through that oil patch are expansive and produce waves in the asphalt road surface. The Schooner wobbles as we attempt to make our way West. We cover the little more than a hundred miles in short time, arriving in Buffalo, Wyoming, where we buy sandwich fixings at a grocery store, then retire to the city park for a bit of a birthday picnic lunch. Turkey and provolone on San Francisco sourdough with what The Muse called "The best pea salad she'd ever tasted." We feasted before turning the car north another fifty miles, where we'd exit onto US Highway 14, and perhaps the most astounding drive either of us had ever experienced.

The road, in a series of switchbacks, quickly transported these travelers thousands of feet above the valley below. Inexorably, even though we continued to climb with each turn, we should certainly have reached the summit by then; however, we continued to ascend, the Schooner at times registering up to a seven percent grade. We were climbing to just above ten thousand feet, to the site of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel. I had chosen this place, a National Park, to be where I would celebrate my birthday, although I had no clear idea just how remote and relatively inaccessible it would prove to be, or what such a celebration should look like.

We arrived at the trailhead by four-thirty and changed into boots. We face a three-mile round-trip hike, which might not seem like much until I mention that we were at 10,000 feet. Also, the trail was predictably uphill both ways. On the way up to the park, we had happened upon a clutch of cars pulled to the side of the narrow road. People were stopped to gawk at a cow moose and her calf mucking around in some bog. A short way later, I spotted a bull moose trotting across a field and even turned around so The Muse could get a gander and shoot a little video of the blesséd event. We noted that whatever else might happen on this birthday, we would remember it as a three-moose day. We continued on our way.

The hike to the Medicine Wheel proved arduous, but we made it. I found a rock to sit on to meditate on my place in the world and managed to put my genitals to sleep before I'd finished. Meditating on a rock might be a perfect metaphor for life, and it proved memorable, if only for the disquieting tingle it produced in my nether regions. We were back at The Schooner by six-thirty, wondering where we might stay that night. As we cruised back down the access road to the highway, a fourth moose appeared, a smallish female, browsing among the alpine scrub. We snapped a photo. A FourMoose birthday celebration, something I hadn't wished for but with which I had been gifted without my even asking for it! How much better could a birthday get?

The Muse began searching for a place for us to stay and found one a hundred and some miles away, back along the Interstate. The drive across the Big Horn Valley was colored with a remarkable pastel sunset that lasted nearly until we arrived. The Muse was also searching for a place for my birthday dinner, but we were in the Montana oil patch by then, and kitchens seemed to close just before we would arrive. She spied one place, but when we pulled up, it looked too low-life for us. We defaulted to the one place that seemed to still have an open kitchen, the Fowl Play Sports Bar and Casino. Every place in Montana seems to have a casino attached. A First Baptist Church and Casino would surprise no one here. Inside, I was treated to my first-ever serving of broasted chicken, which retained the texture of raw chicken while also being too hot to touch. Once cooled, it was tough and flavorless. The beer was the better part of the meal.

We checked into the hotel well after my bedtime. I returned my son's earlier call and spoke with him and my granddaughter before tucking myself in, feeling grateful for a FourMoose birthday. I feel as though we've forever changed the means by which a birthday might be gauged. Do me one or more better if you dare. I will remain satisfied having recalibrated the meaning of a truly happy birthday celebration. Invite moose. They make a difference.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #FollowingChapters, #PureSchmaltz