Looking for Moose in Yellowstone
It was one of those dark and cloudy winter days in Yellowstone National Park where the clouds are so heavy and low, you feel like you can reach up and touch the cloudy sky. A light wind helped to blow the falling snow with occasional gusts of wind causing swirls of fluffy white snow tornados.
I had just one hour before the sunset, although in these conditions it was hard to tell the difference between the day and night. I was at about 8,000-foot elevation, which isn’t extremely high, but high enough to cause me to breathe extra hard when walking, or should I say plowing my way through the knee-deep powdery snow.
The spruce and pine trees that make up the surrounding forest were covered in a thick blanket of snow and when the wind gusted, it sent plumes of fluffy snow off the branches to the ground. A small stream snaked by in the forest. The water was moving fast enough to keep it from freezing. Next to the stream were several thick stands of willow shrub, the perfect food for the reason I was at this location, the Moose (Alces alces).
Moose are the tallest animal in North America and the second largest in overall size/mass, second only to the American Bison. The name Moose is thought to come from the Algonquin language and translate loosely to “he stirps off twigs”, or as some say, “twig eater”. This perfectly describes what these large members of the deer family eat in the winter. Small twigs, such as willow, are the main food during the winter months. This is why I was in this snowy meadow next to a creek looking for Moose.