Earlier in the year, I entered a week’s worth of online contests that the outdoor gear store, REI sponsored. Each day they posted a new photo and asked contestants to write a caption for it. They awarded daily prizes to winners—winter coats, snowboards, and other gear. On one of the days, instead of a photo caption, they asked for a winter haiku.
As it happened, I had a winter haiku rattling around in my head. It came to me one evening as we hiked home on the trail. One of the first winter snowfalls had begun the usual melt and freeze cycle. The trackway of a moose that had followed the trail a few days before turned from sharp hoof prints to pie plate sized, indistinct hollows in the snow. It inspired the following bit of doggerel:
Big Foot haunts these snows
Not the legendary beast—
A moose, going home
“What the heck?” I thought, and entered it in the contest. Continue reading