Season 2, Episode 4: Brett Forsyth's 2022 Human Powered Green Big Year

Well, happy birding to everyone who has chosen to join me here today. It is Saturday, June 1st, 2024, as I type.  I'm Robert Baumander and this is The Big Year Podcast.  My guest is Brett Forsyth, who, in 2022, did a self-powered Big Year, which means he never got in the car to go to see any bird, only walking or cycling from home. So that was a grind of a Big Year because he cycled nearly every day, in every type of weather, sometimes  150 to 300 kilometres and in single day.  And I can safely say he now has the all time record for self-powered Big Years in Ontario.

But first:

Moose, Busses and Automobiles

Now I have a little story to tell.  Once again, I shouldn’t be alive.  I was doing my Trans-Canada Jay Highway trip, and I had a great time going all the way up to Halifax, Nova Scotia from my home in Brantford, Ontario.  On my way back through New Brunswick, I decided, you know what?  I'm going to go through Maine on the way home.  Could be fun.  What could possibly go wrong?  Why not take a little detour and enjoy some of the sights and sounds of birds in Maine? I was about 15 miles from the border, I guess about a 30 minute drive, where I would cross the boarder into Quebec, and I was driving at night and I know, there is the hazard of moose on the road at night.

Of course, I was driving slower and I was paying attention to that possibility, and I thought, I'll be in Canada in half an hour. Why not just keep going instead of finding a place to camp for the night? Well, that was the wrong decision. Going to Maine was the wrong decision, because at 9:02 p.m. on Saturday, May 25th, I hit the moose.  The one thing I had been warned against since taking a defensive-safe driving course when I was 21, NEVER HIT THE MOOSE!

Luckily, that training on safe driving techniques, that I learned over 40 years ago when our instructor taught us about not hitting the moose,(hit the deer, hit the dog, hit the squirrel, hit the bird), but never hit the moose, saved my life.  However, sometimes, though, there are situations where it's unavoidable and you have to be driving in such a way that you can avoid the crash or at least death. In my case, I avoided death. I was driving about five to ten miles per hour below the speed limit. I had my brights on. I was watching ahead for any sign of anything on the road. And suddenly I see the glint in the eye of a moose coming out of a ditch on the right side of the road. Instinct, luckily for me, took over. For once, I did everything right. I slammed on the brakes, making sure that I was swerving in such a way so as not hit the moose head on, veering a little bit to the right as the moose was moving to the left.  

The moose leapt into the road, of course, it had to, and just as my car came to a stop, the moose's butt hit my windshield right in front of my eyes. Talk ab out intense?  Oh my god, that was quite the moment, and yet I survived.  So did the moose.  It signalled a left turn and ran into the woods.

I was very much in the middle of nowhere with no cell signal  Two things saved me from a very long night alone on an empty road.  First, another driver, behind me in a pickup truck, on the way to his camp, stayed with me and second and more importantly, my iPhone 15Pro with Emergency SOS by satellite.  Using the phone I was able to message for help and have Emergency Services come to my location and rescue me.  Thanks Apple!

So, let this be a warning, because I hear about people who are driving the dark country roads, in Canada and the States, and they just, in the middle of the night, in the dark dark, with no other cars on the road, are just booming along at 80, 90 miles an hour, and every single one of those people who hit a moose is dead now.

Go slow, have your brights on, watch for moose.   Or better still, don't drive these roads at night. That's crazy. I'll never do that again. But I am here to tell the tale. My car pro