Life in the Thicket

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that extraordinary morning at Lake Josephine in the Many Glacier area of Glacier National Park, Montana. Everything fit together in a miraculous way. The timing was just right.

Due to our travel schedule, my brother’s and I only had 1 hour to hike the half-mile to Lake Josephine and back. This didn’t leave much time for pictures or wildlife watching; according to metadata from my camera, we spent all of 19 minutes at the lake. But God can do anything! Snow had fallen just two days previous and evidently the cold snap brought the wildlife to action. After spending 15 minutes shooting the scenic beauty of the lake, we were packing up to leave when this moose burst out of the thicket on the other side of the lake. In a matter of 2 minutes, it had crossed the lake onto our side, jogged toward us within 50 yards, and then abruptly turned into the forest and disappeared. I had never seen anything like it before—and probably never will again!