A heavy dose of curiosity dragged me from my warm down sleeping bag at 4:30 a.m. on a chilly August morning in Tombstone. After pulling slowly out of the campground, we bounced up the pothole-ridden Dempster Highway toward the sunrise.

We drove past green and ochre mountain flanks being consumed by the downward creep of a crimson alpenglow, and watched the frost encrusted tundra melt into a dewy glaze. Mesmerized by the morning light show unfolding around me, I quickly forgot about the cozy cocoon I'd left behind.

Crossing the Blackstone Uplands, we approached a generously sized pond named Two Moose Lake. Standing chest-high in the water and lurking in shadows along the shore stood nine moose.

Though the changing light played with our eyes, we made out several large sets of antlers plunging underwater and bobbing up again, mouths full of aquatic grasses torn from the lake bottom. As we pulled in to watch, two wary moose cows and their long-legged calves retreated into thickets of dwarf birch.