I’ve always been a believer that some animals are just drawn to us; there are hundreds in this valley, and some people see them, or some of them, and some people don’t. Why do they hide from some of us, and show their faces to others? Why do we have affinities to species that seem to follow us around our whole lives? I’ve always wondered these questions, and explored them with “Animal Medicine” cards and similar books for over a decade now, taking these “visits” as signs to read, as the native Utes read them, when animal energies appear. But I had to explore this idea much deeper when I came across moose in the fourth dimension last week.
I was walking up a quiet and secluded trail I often take with my Newfoundland. Before this trail climbs my favorite one of many nearby rocky peaks, it winds, twistingly, through a thick fern meadow, lush with wildflowers and aspens intermingled with the largest fern grove I’ve ever seen in this valley. It’s mystical in itself, almost of the pacific-northwest style, and you can almost hear (well, you can, if you shut your ego off) the fairies laughing and flying about.
I’ve been melancholy lately, as some of us are with introspect around our birthdays, and as I entered this amazing meadow, I asked my guides to “show me the fourth dimension,” intending only to see the fairies I could hear giggling around my ears, to lighten my own spirit above the melancholic state. Instantly, I saw something move. I blinked, hardly believing a fairy could be that big and brown, and my eyes opened to a big, quietly moving moose calf, bare of antlers, and quiet as a mouse. I may have seen two, but the aspens played tricks on me, and I had to move around them to see my moose. Her backside was that big, round brown backside that only moose have, and her nose, you know that bulbous Bullwinkle nose that’s unmistakable. I watched her eating ferns and willows for a moment that was so brief, I’m still not sure I saw her.
I turned my back for an instant to make sure my mellow dog was still, as she always is; intent on my behavior and watching carefully. I put my finger to my lips to sign the “shhhh,” and she remained still and silent. Good dog. I turned around, and moose was gone. I stood there, watching for her, and then, a side trail through the ferns caught my eye. Ferns, flattened against the ground and wide enough for a moose, drew me into the meadow, off the beaten path. We walked in slowly, quietly, in search of her or traces of her, and I could only see the chewed plants and rubbed aspens she’d left behind.
Profoundly changed for the day, I walked slowly, almost in a trance, slightly further up the trail to the point where I often rest on a rock and think. I sat there, asking what moose medicine means, and my mind filled with the duality of power and mystery. Curious to read more, I cut my hike short and went home to my newest book on animal medicine, Animal Speak, by Ted Andrews. When I realized that I had been gone nearly 90 minutes, for what should have taken twenty, I thought, perhaps something more happened that my conscious mind remembers.
According to Andrews, moose “is an animal of contradictions; strange yet majestic, awkward yet graceful. He makes us smile, while also causing us to catch our breath.” This was true, I thought, as I recalled that I held my breath for minutes while waiting to see my moose appear again. Andrews goes on to say that moose “has an uncanny ability to camouflage itself, in spite of its great size and power, moving silently and speedily, under the deception of ungainliness.” To the native Americans, moose “is the symbol of creativity and dynamic forms of intuition and illumination.”
Intrigued by how these and Andrews’ additional words rung true to me and my life in its current path, I felt myself returning to nature, grounding, and finding more meaning in life, hidden beneath the surface of our quickness. Excited to continue my studies with animals, I began to notice these signs more and more over the next week; the smell of skunk in the night through our bedroom window, the eagle that circled my car at the lake, the coyotes howling in the distance of Fish Creek Canyon, the chipmunk that sat on the rock and stared at us, unafraid. These signs were pieces of normal life, however, animals I do typically see or hear or smell every day. I wasn’t as impressed by nature – impressed in the sense of being imprinted by something - until, when in the same lovely fern dale, I saw another unusual animal, out of place like moose was, in this area I visit nearly daily, and have never seen animals in.
I walked up to the same spot, and although I’d been here three times since and seen nothing, I had not asked as I did with moose. This time, I put myself in reverence, and asked once again to see the fourth dimension, what is before us that we can not see with our human eye. When I asked this, my eye was drawn to the right, to the underbelly of the ferns, the darkness that hides many lives within, and I thought to myself, “wow, I bet there is a city of rabbits under there.” And sure enough, my eye was instantly drawn left, to the darting movements of jackrabbit, leaping in and out of the grassy area adjacent to my favorite fern meadow. His big ears bouncing above the foot-tall grass, his long back legs the last thing I saw.
Again I turned to my bear-dog and as good as she is, she didn’t make chase. We both stood there and I wanted to giggle, like a child who laughs at fairies in the woods. My mind said, “did you see that?” And her mind replied, “that was one fast bunny.”
So again, I made it only up to my contemplation rock, and again, seemed to be lost in thought for longer than I was lost on foot in the woods. I returned to read more from Andrews’ Animal Speak, and found that, aside from its obvious meaning of rapid procreation, that it is known in many cultures, from Egypt to China to America, for its ability to possess the powers of the moon. Its procreation only lasts as long as the moon cycle, and those with rabbit energy are creative, sensitive, and artistic. His energy also symbolizes endeavors that occur in leaps and hops, and is also associated with the fairy realm, something I was already asking to see, and all things that fit so very neatly with meaning into my life right now.
So I ask you, instead of whisking through life at warp speed, instead of talking to your friends on your hikes and missing half of the mysticism that nature has gifted to us, slow down and read the signs that are all around you. They are there to attract us back into our natural state of being, one with nature, and the more we remove ourselves from that, the more we suffer. Alternatively, the more we align with that, the more we prosper. Good luck finding animals that prefer to go unseen!
Other Animal Meanings:
Remember that sometimes it is the lack of these things that is the message, and the animal is trying to bring its strengths to you.
Big Horn Sheep- New beginnings, sensitivity, perseverance, power, strength, and mental activity
Elk- Strength, nobility, stamina, power, endurance, partnership, cooperation, needing vegetables
Fox- Camouflage, invisibility, adaptability, shapeshifting, a guide to the fairy realm
Porcupine- Renewed sense of wonder, curiosity, amusement, protection, blunt words
Prairie Dog- Community minded, safety oriented, needing vegetables and social interaction
Skunk- Respect, self-esteem, sense of smell, tomatoes (the only thing that removes the smell, the counterparts of these animals should be studied and used as well)
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