June 2009

Blessing the Moose

BY THE REV. KATE BRAESTRUP, CHAPLAIN, MAINE WARDEN SERVICE

I came upon a scene where an adolescent male moose had just been hit by a car.

This car’s driver was lucky. Alive and uninjured, he stood by the side of the road, near where the moose lay, still moving. A stream of blood, glowing black in the starlight, had reached the edge of the asphalt.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” I inquired. “Let me check your pupils. Any neck pain?”

“I’m fine. I’m just covered with glass. Shouldn’t we do something about this poor guy? You know, shoot him or something?” He gave my Maine Warden Service uniform a sidelong glance. The Warden Service is responsible for, among other things, protecting wildlife in Maine, but I’m just its chaplain. I lack any weapon with which I might put an animal out of its misery.

The moose lifted its head and looked our way with soft dark eyes. Then its head went down and stayed down. I moved to touch the moose’s vast rib cage. My hand found rough fur, no heartbeat.

“It’s been taken care of,” I said. “Thank God.”

With my hand on the moose, I paused for a moment. “I’m sorry.” And to myself I said, “Dear Father, bless the beasts and singing birds, and guard with tenderness all things that have no words.” Next time someone asks me, “What does a Maine Warden Service chaplain do? Bless the moose?” I can say, “Yes.”

The Maine Warden Service chaplain responds when calamities occur in the state’s woods. I had been on my way home from a drowning accident when I happened upon the car-moose collision.

It’s August in Maine, the loveliest season in a lovely place. Folks come from all over the country just to rejoice in our mild summer air, wander our woodlands, refresh themselves in and on our shining waters. In any season, Maine is a paradise for healthy souls enamored of outdoor recreation.

“He is a good swimmer,” the victim’s father said to me. His eyes were fixed on the rescue dive boat and flicked to my face only briefly as I introduced myself: “I am Kate Braestrup, chaplain to the Maine Warden Service. I’m so sorry this has happened.” He was shirtless, his thin shoulders and the top of his pale belly already turning pink. “There’s no way he’d drown.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again. It was inadequate, of course, but I am accustomed to inadequacy and am not bothered by it, much.

Statistically speaking, the deaths that the rescue and recovery divers and I see in summer are not inevitable. I try to remind myself that recreational boating is survivable; people do it safely all the time. Even inexperienced, drugged, or drunken people do it, and most still manage not to run into anything or fall overboard.

The Warden Service is responsible for responding to and investigating freshwater boating mishaps no matter the outcome, but its chaplain is only called out when someone is dead. So I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense that, after six years of this work, I can’t look at a canoe or kayak or Boston Whaler without thinking of drowning, any more than I can go for a hike without thinking about wilderness search and rescue, or see a jet ski without remembering what can happen when you bash one of those against a partially submerged rock. Despite the clear light and pine-scented air, my Maine summers hold darkness.

My husband says: “I see a motorcycle with sculptural lines and exhilarating speed; you see an accident waiting to happen. I see a lake and dream about windsurfing; you start planning for the recovery of a drowned body.

I’m a Fantasizer, you’re an Awfulizer.”

It is a common complaint in law enforcement families. I experienced it myself when my first husband, Drew, a state trooper, was alive.

“That guy is a child molester,” Drew would say darkly of the ordinary-looking man comparing brands of canned tuna in the grocery store. “And that one over there, by the frozen foods? He was indicted last week for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t tell me these things,” I would snap. “I like the illusion that I live in a safe world.”

Now, 11 years after Drew’s death in a car accident, I know too much, too. Because the game wardens I work with are not primarily responsible for investigating child abuse or drug trafficking, I’m not particularly afraid of criminals. I know the bad guys are out there, but I maintain what is doubtless the most realistic as well as the most comfortable perspective: Crime happens in Maine, but it’s relatively rare. Ordinary safeguards are sufficient.

Every day, all over the state, thousands of people are happily splashing, swimming, and kayaking in and on Maine waters. They are hiking or hunting through forests, snowshoeing or skiing our white winter landscapes, or setting out onto the frozen surfaces of our lakes for some snowmobiling or ice fishing. At the end of the day, they come home happy. They tuck their children into bed. “Wasn’t that fun?” they ask, and the children, still pink-cheeked from the fresh air, nod sleepily. Outdoor recreation casualties are rare, too.

“Reverend Worst-Case Scenario,” my children call me. I am summoned to the scene when the worst has happened:

The woodland wanderer has not returned; the ice skater has vanished, and there’s a hole in the ice; the boy shouted “Watch this!” and dove into the water but never came to the surface. I don’t want to create fear in my children. But I wouldn’t be averse to instilling a little reasonable caution. Actually, make that a lot of caution, reasonable or otherwise.

When my daughters, Ellie and Woolie, were eight and six, respectively, they got lost in the woods. Actually, they went for a walk in a forest with their older brothers, who got tired of their slower pace and left them behind on the trail. We were staying on a small wooded island, perhaps a mile long by half a mile wide, but it didn’t occur to the boys that their little sisters might not share their grasp of the geography. From Ellie’s and Woolie’s point of view, they had been abandoned in a vast, dark wilderness. After a few panicked moments, it occurred to Ellie that if they found the shoreline, they might be able to circumambulate the island and thus eventually arrive at the beachside cabin that, because Mom could be found there, was home. So they struck off bravely through the scratchy scrub in the direction of surf sounds. When they reached the coast, they turned right and started walking. But then, clambering along the rough and stony shore, Ellie fell, cutting her knee badly.

Woolie made a quick analysis of their situation. Things looked bleak. So she did the only thing she could think of: She threw back her head and addressed herself to the empty sky. “Help!” she shrieked. “Help! We are lost in the forest, and my sister is bleeding!” Within minutes, a paramedic with a first-aid kit was at her side.

His name was Frank, he told me later, after he had bandaged Ellie’s knee and led both children back to my doorstep. He was vacationing with his family in a cottage on the other side of the island and had been peacefully sunning himself when the summer breeze carried Woolie’s cri de coeur to his trained ears.

Woolie seemed to take it as a matter of course that her prayers had been answered so promptly and appropriately, even in the midst of what to her was wilderness. I was flabbergasted.

The night I blessed the moose, I was on my way home from the drowning accident. “You know,” I told my stepdaughter the next day, “you’ve really got to watch out for moose.” She is 16 and eagerly anticipating driving on Maine’s roads.

“Oh, I will,” she assured me blithely.

“No. Really,” I insisted. My husband shook his head and hugged me.

“You need a vacation,” he said and took me to California.

We left the children behind. For five days, anyway, we would worry about no one but ourselves. There, on the other side of the continent, let strangers splash, swim and sail, hike the trails and shoot the rapids; whatever the outcome of their recreation, I would not be called.

It was a wonderful trip. My husband and I traveled the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to Venice Beach. Near Santa Barbara, I spotted a couple of familiar shapes in the water; phoca vitulina, or harbor seals. We have them along the coast of Maine, too. Their heads are round and sleek, and their eyes are brown, thoughtful, and almost human.

“Hello, you lovely creatures!” I said to them. They regarded me curiously for a moment, then sounded, their long backs gleaming as they slid easily beneath the surface. And there it was, triggered like the knee that kicks at the stroke of a rubber hammer: a reflex twinge of professional concern, a reflex stab of maternal fear.

I know full well that a harbor seal can stay beneath the water for 20 minutes if it wants to. Seals are seals! Water is home to them. Their world is reliable and responsive, just as my daughter’s world responds reliably to her. I have yet to disabuse my three daughters or three sons of their self-confidence—I’ve managed at least to restrain myself, or my husband has restrained me. Still, I do watch.
And so, though I haven’t admitted this to my husband, I could not leave the beach nor take my eyes off the water until those round heads broke the surface and joined me again in the safe and welcoming air. “Please, dear God, bless the beasts and singing birds, and guard with tenderness all things that have no words.”

This piece is excerpted from an article which originally appeared in the Boston Globe. Kate Braestrup’s book, Here If You Need Me: A True Story, was published in 2007 by Little, Brown and Company, and is the recipient of the UUA’s Melcher Book Award. Her new book, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, is due out in January, 2010.