We never do much of anything on the first night but kick back around the campfire and catch up with our friends. Dinner was bags of Jo Jo's chicken and all the fixin's, made interesting by Jeff's new hobby of secretly filming the feeding frenzy. He should hook up with James O'keefe. The video? A bunch of yakking women lined up at a trough. And no, not in a million years.

 

It was unusually warm on the first night, no need for the usual scarves and mittens. The fire was roaring and at long last we get to the story telling. Susan had mentioned earlier that Jeff had had some sort of spiritual rebirth, believing he had been reincarnated. This was going to be good. We saw more and more signs of this accompanied by each beer snapped. I became a believer when in mid-sentence he stopped, raised his head to the north, and sniffed the wind several times. I looked at Susan questioningly. She nodded and whispered, "Bigfoot."

 

A spirit of the old West had overtaken Jeff, that of an Indian scout, as he was convinced he was in a prior life. Jeff proceeded to amuse us by demonstrating fascinating Indian tricks, such as a tricky war hoop and Indian dance, and how to carry hot coals from one campsite to another without burning one's fingers or setting a loincloth on fire. I told Susie if he started calling me kemo sabe, I was going home.

 

So the Chief had a mission planned for the following day and was fully prepared to lead his tribe into the wilds in search of the majestic Maine moose. We rose at the crack of dawn, packed up the wagon train and set out on our moose expedition. Jeff, Susie, a friend who asked to remain nameless, and I climbed into the Cherokee. (It was really a Wrangler, but Cherokee sounds so...well, Indian, doesn't it?) Earl and Gail brought up the rear in their own rig. I was wishing I could have slept in longer.

 

There were a couple of tense moments as trails narrowed and Gail's rig bottomed out in streams and on a couple of trails. This prompted the ladies to question the Chief's leadership skills, but he held firm to an old Indian trick called a GPS. After a couple of hours of leaf peeping, me crabbing about stopping for a cigarette, and heavy moose tracking, (yawn) we begged to stop for a pee call. To me, one tree is pretty much the same as the next, but "She Who Wishes To Remain Nameless" was being pretty darn fussy. She preferred a well lighted clearing which at times can take an hour or so to find. Just as our squirming was about to rock our rig off the trail, Big Chief Runs With Beer became our own Moses, driving us out of the darkness into the Promised Land.

 

There took place a mass exodus, and quite the fiasco as we all popped out of the rigs like snakes in a can. We each grabbed a tree, and in a moment all was again right with the world. As we regrouped, Big Chief Pain in the Ass mentioned in typical Indian deadpan that his chosen tree was debarked! I blankly looked at Susie, Gail blankly looked at me and Earl decided to have a beer and sit for a spell. Our excited response was "Uh, hmph. Would you look at that." I made a mental note to be sure and tell "She Who Wishes To Remain Nameless" about the debarking thing, who it seems was having second thoughts about her original tree selection. "It is the will of 'Forplei', the Indian god of rutting," Big Chief Mounting Moose said. A dissertation in the mating rituals of moose followed. We were mesmerizzzzzzed by the Chief's lessons, and again hopeful that the elusive Maine moose would be spotted, so we could go back to camp and have a nap.

 

We followed the Great One to the side of the trail. He was bent over poking something with a twig. Eureka! It was a gargantuan pile of moose poop. It was fresh! It was steaming! It was a sign! He immediately herded his tribe back into our wagons, convinced we would soon succeed in tracking down the elusive majestic Maine moose. Yippee skippy.

 

Sadly, it was not to be. Big Chief He Who Lost the Moose was inconsolable. The rest of us took it pretty well though. We had moved on to talk of the brontosaurus sized steak offered at a local restaurant. I ignored the fact that I had no circulation in my feet from being jammed in the back of the Jeep for four hours, and "She Who Wishes to Remain Nameless" was only slightly conflicted about how many of bottles of wine she might need for dinner. All in all, we were pretty happy to see tar and indoor plumbing.

 

That night it was pretty quiet around the campfire. Not even a whiff of Bigfoot. Another year had passed, fruitless in our search for the elusive Maine moose. One slightly inebriated satiated face staring into the glowing embers was noticeably absent, though. Jeff was in the coach watching John Wayne movies.