who's afraid?

The previous day I had seen a black fox. I'd never seen one before and in fact, didn't recognize this little guy as a fox for quite a while. He was a beautiful deep charcoal with a shiny full coat and a lighter gray coloring on his face. I pulled my motorcycle over to the side of the road and snapped off a series of stills. A couple miles down the road, I realized I forgot to get some video footage of the critter and would have loved to gotten some for my compilation I'm putting together of my Alaska ride. I had another 400 miles of the Cassiar Highway left so I hoped odds were in my favor of seeing another black fox.

To call the Cassiar Highway (and particularly the northern half) a "highway" is a bit of stretch. It's really just a small ribbon of semi-paved road that runs north-south through the coastal range of British Columbia. There are no real lane markers on the road nor guardrails nor warning signs. It's full of potholes and riddled with stretches that have no pavement at all. The annual thawing and freezing cycle has reduced sections of the road into a cracked and crumpled mess.

And it's absolutely heaven on earth. A majority of north-south travellers opt for the more civilized Alaska highway leaving the Cassiar blissfully free of RV's, Buicks, and all manner of transportational atherosclerosis. I would ride for what seemed like hours on end without coming across another vehicle. Rugged mountain tops and endless acres of forest were so very infrequently interrupted by civilization. And what little civilization there is was in the form of a lone house or campground or diner/gas station seperated by miles of nothing-ness. And everything-ness.

It was just this isolation that I was contemplating when I came around the corner as it straightened out for about a half mile in the distance. Near the end of that distance I saw them. Two black foxes trotting carefree across the road. Happy to have gotten a second chance at filming them, I slowed my motorcycle down to about 5 miles an hour and stood up on the pegs to spot them as they stepped into the brush on the left side of the road. I crept up to where I was sure they would be so as not to scare them off. I contemplated killing the engine, grabbing my camera and sneaking off into the bush to find them but decided against it.

After searching for awhile to no avail, I resigned to the fact that I scared them off and was just about to resume speed. I was swiveling my head back to the road and at about 45 degrees and 10 feet off the side of the road, my gaze froze on two menacing yellow eyes.

Wolf.

I've seen wolves at a distance - on this trip, actually - and growing up in Montana, I've heard lots of wolf stories. But never in my life had I been this close to any sort of predator, let alone a wolf. A huge, black wolf. What I thought were foxes and closer to me, were actually two black wolves much farther down the road. My depth perception fails me at the worst of times.

I was beyond thrilled. Ecstatic. What an incredible opportunity! How many people have been face to face with a wolf out in the wild? I wasn't stupid enough to pull a camera out but I slowed down to savor this encounter. Wolves are skittish creatures that are more afraid of you than you are of them. They do not like to cross paths with humans. And of course, they aren't going to want any part of a human standing up on a a noisy motorcycle that smells of HOLY SHIT HE'S RUNNING RIGHT AT ME!

I did not see that coming.

The reality of this situation was that I wasn't really in any danger. My motorcycle tops out at 120MPH. I don't know how fast wolves run but I'd guess it's less than that. However, staring down the business end of a wolf running right at you is still a true holy shit moment. True holy shit moments strip away all the layers of crap and circumstance, exposing pitted metal. I write software for a living and attend calculus classes at night. I dabble in the outdoors on weekends but always under controlled contexts. My life is holy-shit-moment free. In fact, I could count the number of holy shit moments I've had on exactly, lessee... umm, NO fingers. It would take me no fingers at all to count up the holy shit moments in my life. I would like to think my Montana upbringing combined with my experiences in the outdoors would have hardened me into a steely man of action but truth be told, my grande latte lifestyle has left me as soft and squishy as a newborn baby's head. But this knowledge I will take to my grave: when out in the wilds of Canada alone on a motorcycle with no one else in sight and being run down by a large black wolf, I do NOT scream like a schoolgirl and I do NOT shit my pants. I say this not as any source of pride but rather a deep, engulfing sense of relief. I'm not sure I could bear it if I learned I was that guy.

However, I should disclose that I redline'd that motorcycle balls out for 8 miles before I got the courage to pull over to the side of the road and check my underwear for skid marks.