Moose is best medicine for healing injured artist

THE MOOSE THUNDERED into Greg Torline’s life at the right time. Greg crashed from ceiling to floor during a construction job in late January in Coeur d’Alene. He broke six ribs and his shoulder blade. He punctured a lung. His collarbone detached from his shoulder.

Luckily, plenty of people were at the worksite. A call for help went out immediately. An ambulance hauled Greg to Kootenai Medical Center, where he spent two days in intensive care and a week under general watch. Doctors pried apart his ribs to insert a tube in his chest. The bones he broke had to heal without help.

“It was awful,” says Greg’s wife, Janet Torline, who was out of the state at her father’s funeral when Greg fell. She heard the news about his accident over the phone from Ellen Travolta, a family friend.

Greg was plenty sore and making it through the day on pain pills when the EXCEL Foundation called in February to arrange delivery of a life-size moose he’d committed months earlier to transform into a work of art. Nonprofit EXCEL raises money for extras in Coeur d’Alene School District classrooms

The moose was part of EXCEL’s No Moose Left Behind project. The organization chose 27 artists to gussy up 27 identical moose sculptures in their own style. EXCEL will auction off the moose – 26 because one was stolen – in September to raise money for special projects in the schools.

“I’d already signed a contract to do it,” Greg says. “I couldn’t split firewood to heat the shop so I could work on the moose.”

Greg is no whiner. He’s a renaissance man with pioneer spirit and one of the only tanned and muscled construction workers around who comfortably sprinkles his conversations with German and French, poetry and philosophy. He’s an artist and a craftsman, and the home he and Janet built themselves at Turner Bay reflects their creativity, individuality and belief in the spiritual renewal of hard work.

So, friends sprang to Greg’s aid when the moose demanded more of his attention than he could afford.

In February, Greg slept in a recliner because it hurt to lie on a bed. He could bend but not straighten again. Every sniff and sneeze hurt his rib cage. Contractor Mike Dodge raced to the rescue. He picked up Greg’s moose and took it to his Dodge Construction office on Coeur d’Alene Avenue downtown. Mike had a vacant heated office. He moved Greg in and gave him his father’s old leather office chair on wheels so he could get around.

“Bless Mike Dodge,” Greg says.

Janet drove Greg to town every day. He cut his pain pills in half so he could concentrate. When he wearied after a few hours of painting, Greg walked up the street to the Art Spirit Gallery, where owner Steve Gibbs allowed him to nap in his basement.

The work was wearying. If Greg knelt to paint the moose’s legs or underside, he couldn’t raise himself. So he stood and held a mirror in one hand while he painted with the other. Still, he was grateful to the moose.

“It gave me something to focus on,” Greg says. “You get involved in artwork and time disappears.”

Moose are a common sight around the Torline home. Greg says he knows he’s a guest in their territory. He wanted his moose to reflect its home in every season, so he painted gravel up each leg from the hooves, then a river and more gravel leading to a heavy pine forest on the moose’s body. The forest stretches into a sky with clouds that covers the moose’s back, head and antlers. The seasons shift from spring on the moose’s back left quarter to summer and fall in the front and winter on the back right.

Painting contractor Darrel Dlouhy kept Greg supplied with paint. Mike, Steve and Janet filled him with moral support. Three weeks after he started painting, Greg finished and returned to full-time recuperation.

“I have earned an associate’s degree in gardening and domestic science,” he says, grinning. He hasn’t worked since the Jan. 21 accident but plans to start again next month

His moose, “Walk Softly and Look for Tracks,” stands in front of the Idaho Spokesman-Review building in Coeur d’Alene.

Greg is connected to his scenic moose in a way few other artists can claim. The project provided therapy as well as a creative outlet during a tough time.

“I worked upside down and backwards to paint the moose because I couldn’t get down on my hands and knees,” he says. “But I’m so glad it was there for me to do.”