At least I'm comfortable

The wind was ripping and the rain was coming down in sheets. It was, in a word, a perfect day.

If you were a moose.

We weren’t moose, of course, but we figured if we went for a hike on this day we’d pretty much have Glacier Park to ourselves and we were right. We saw a couple of other die-hards out on a run, but other than that, the place was empty.

The driving rain made for a good day to test my new Volcom rain shell, which isn’t really a rain shell, I later learned, but a snowboarder’s jacket that just happens to be made out of Gore-Tex. It’s a super ugly color, not quite camouflage, but it kept the rain out and better yet, it was half off, which meant it was well south of $200, which was my price range.

I have a lot of clearance clothes in my closet. You can get some high quality stuff at a deep discount if you’re willing to wear a burnt umber sweater or blaze orange underwear.

I once wore a lime green, skin-tight, super soft merino wool sweater to a Columbia Falls wrestling meet. Got some cross-eyed looks from the principal at the time, which I answered with a shrug and a “hey, at least I’m comfortable.”

I base my wardrobe on what the moose think and the short answer is the moose don’t care what you’re wearing, just as long as you leave them alone. And so I went on Sunday down the trail in a bright green sweater, blaze orange underwear and an ugly shell. Toasty warm in a pounding rain.

We saw three moose. Two bulls and a cow. We had to walk around the cow. She was a big moose, even for a cow and she was happily scratching her back in the driving rain on a poor scraggly aspen tree right next to the trail.

We gave her a wide berth. Getting stepped on by a moose is no fun. You might get mud all over your blaze orange underwear.

Aside: Mike Turner stopped by the office Monday. His grandson, Grant Wallace is playing for Rocky Mountain College and doing pretty well. Grant played hoops for the Wildcats through his junior year before moving to Idaho. You can catch him play against the Salish and Kootenai College Saturday at 4 p.m. in Pablo.

— Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.