It was time to get my eyeglass prescription renewed, before another year abroad. I went to WalMart for an eye exam. I didn’t intend to buy glasses, but only to have the prescription to take with me in case my three current pairs of bifocals all broke or got lost. On a whim, I asked if my prescription would be suitable for contact lenses. I have asked that question periodically over the years, waiting for technology to catch up. This time I was told that yes, there were bifocal soft contact lenses. I got fitted with a test pair that I was instructed to wear for a week.
I interpreted the ‘blurred vision’ caution to mean that in the distance objects would have soft edges. I was not prepared to lose the ability to read road signs, MPH markers, store marquees, and to see all lights as blurs.
I was driving home this evening at dusk. It was raining. What little traffic there was moved along at the speed limit, the road seemed fine. My headlights were on, but there was still light enough to see the colors of the flowers in the gardens I passed along the way. Then I came to the Proctorsville Gulf, a twisting road that rose up an escarpment through a canopy of trees. Suddenly my horizon shut down to the edge of my bright beams. There was no car ahead of me.
Around a bend I came upon the flashing lights of an 18-wheeler. I eased up on the gas a little as the lights of the truck grew larger in my windshield. The next 15 seconds are a blur. As soon as I saw that he was parked square in the middle of the downhill lane I took my foot off the gas completely, and edged halfway into my shoulder lane. The truck lights filled my view; all else was black as I peered through the windshield. Just as I came parallel with the truck a looming shadow jumped in front of my car and I felt a thud.
“What the…?!” I pulled all the way onto the shoulder and parked. I reviewed the flash that imprinted on my mind, of a dark shadow against bright lights, of what seemed to be a head and an outstretched arm and leg. A man waving me down, warning me to slow?
I grab the umbrella and jump out of the car, heading back down hill to check on the man who is surely lying on the road. A car drives past me going uphill, and in his lights I see a vision straight out of ‘Northern Exposure’[1] Across the road on the shoulder I see a moose walking uphill. I stop and stare at this amazing sight. I am not used to seeing wild moose walking along the side of a road.
On my soggy walk down hill a car slows to my pace, and the woman driver starts talking to me. She seems to be speaking softly from within her car, the dense trees and the sounds of the rain dampening what little voice escapes. I hear the questioning tone and in my tense concern I start to explain.
“I think I hit someone.”
“….hurt?”
“I am going to see if he’s hurt.”
“…moose?”
“Yes, I saw the moose up there. He seemed fine. I think I hit a man.”
“Oh!…moose…you mean…OK.”
And with that she drove away just as I came up parallel with the back of the truck. My eyes scoured the lane in front of me, and across to the downhill lane, the shoulders, and I saw no man lying in the road, no markers to ward off other travelers. The driver of the truck is walking around his vehicle, its Christmas-tree brightness bouncing off his red shirt. I toss my voice into the echoless night.
“Did I hit a man?”
“Oh, did you hit the moose?”
I turned my head uphill under the umbrella, as if I could still see the animal. “Well, I just saw him and he looked all right.”
“I turned my flashers on to slow down traffic…”
“So I didn’t hit anyone?” The rhetorical question hung in the air as the trucker moved through the bright lights with a rag in hand, oblivious to the drizzle.
I trudged uphill to my parked car, walking to the hood to check for damage. I didn’t see any, but I did see that the moose was trotting back down hill, still on the shoulder. I waited for a car to pass, then crossed over to him. I trailed behind him, like a squawking duck flapping my arms and bobbing the umbrella hissing ‘shoo, shoo’ in a vain attempt to get him to go back into the forest. But there was a guard rail impeding his egress.
Headlights rounding the bend from above redirected my focus. A large truck was coming down the hill. In fear of the moose making another dash into traffic, I began to pantomime for the driver to slow down. I didn’t hear an immediate easing off. Why wasn’t he getting my message? I flashed on what he must be seeing.
A red umbrella bobbing up and down. An outstretched hand held parallel to the ground, pushing the air down. An ankle-length dress, black with bright splashes of red, orange and yellow flowers, going up and down like an accordian. I would have thought that at least the absurdity of the sight would have caught his attention enough for him to ease off the gas…
There was nothing more I could do. I got back into my car and drove off. The canopy thinned as I reached the top of the hill, and dusky visibility returned. I hadn’t been on the road ten seconds before I saw clearly what had just transpired. Had I heeded the trucker’s flashing lights and pulled off the road immediately, together we could have herded the moose across the road to carry on his journey. Instead, he was trotting up and down the hill, up and down, frustrated and perhaps dazed by the blow of one of these two-eyed speeding monsters. Had I my normal clear vision I would have been quicker to recognize the situation ahead of me, and responded properly.
If I do decide to take a supply of contact lenses to China with me, I will remember not to wear them at night, when I need to see where I am going.
[1] Northern Exposure was a TV series of a fictional Alaska town. Each episode begins with credits rolling in front of a moose trotting down the main street of Roslyn.
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