Behind Us

How beautiful a day can be
When kindness touches it!
-George Elliston

Spouse and I stopped at a gasoline station yesterday just after we left our friend's home in Northern Maine. The morning was motionless, and the frigid air had razored teeth that gnawed at our faces. We welcomed the drastic change in temperature, resigned as we have become to the overwhelming blanket that Summer flings over us.
As Spouse filled the tank of the car and we stood shivering and surveying the scenery, a figure burst from the adjoining store.
Then she was calling to us, the station attendant Spouse had spoken to minutes earlier. She was trying desperately to tell us something but she was at too great a distance for her words to be determined. Perhaps, we thought hastily, we had left the credit card on the counter inside; perhaps our particular gas pump was out of order. We wondered, and waited for her approach.
"Look!" she cried, pointing at something behind us. "Moose! There's a moose. Look!"
We turned. Far across the frost-tipped fields, obscured first by one enormous tree and then another, then at last visible in its magnificent entirety, was a tremendous, lumbering moose.
He was thundering past somebody's house, somebody's garden, crashing briefly through civilisation, his herculean form shaking loose the tranquility and ripping across the canvas of a pure morning.
A shred of sunlight ricocheted off the departing creature, and then he was gone.
It was the first moose I ever laid eyes on; but more significant was the fact that the lady, who surely was familiar with the antics of moose in the area, had emerged from her warm corner to tell us we were missing a spectacular sight.
She might have dismissed the thought of sharing the scene with us; the fact that she did not hesitate, and the coinciding fact that I had never seen a moose in all my life made the event a precious one.
We did thank her profusely, but in all likelihood she was unaware of how deep an impression her humble deed left on our day.