Photography helps a Montana 'moose whisperer' heal
The westbound pickup lost traction on an icy bridge near Ramsay. The truck slid and then rolled.
The driver and a passenger in the shotgun seat escaped with minor injuries. But Carly Moodry, unbelted in the middle, was ejected through the pickup's rear window.
The date of the early morning crash on Interstate 90 west of Butte was April 19, 2007.
The Anaconda native was 19 years old at the time, a student at Montana Tech and a part-time employee at Fred's Mesquite Grill in Butte, where she had worked that night.
Rhonda Moodry, Carly's mother, accompanied her gravely injured daughter on the Life Flight to St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula. Rhonda learned Carly had suffered a traumatic brain injury. The prognosis was grim.
The first physician predicted that if Carly survived, she'd live out her life in a long-term care facility. He said surgery to relieve pressure on Carly's brain was an option, but so was simply accepting the reality of her profound injury and allowing her to die.
Rhonda recalled that conversation.
"He said, 'Should we just get her comfortable and let her pass?'"
Mike Moodry, Carly's father, and Carly's brother, Steve, drove to Missoula.
Mike learned the sobering facts from another physician who recommended surgery to remove a portion of Carly's skull to relieve pressure from her swelling brain.
"He said, 'Hey, here's the deal, she's young, she's healthy. She's got everything going for her, and I tell you, if that's my daughter lying there, I'd say operate,'" Mike recalled.
More than 17 years later, on a recent Thursday, Carly Moodry, 36, focused her Canon mirrorless camera on a bull moose and captured a clear image of the ungulate feeding on vegetation in Georgetown Lake west of Anaconda. The photograph shows strips of velvet beginning to detach from the moose's antlers and water streaming from the bull's dewlap.
A fan of Carly's wildlife photography calls her "the moose whisperer" because of her uncanny ability to find and photograph an animal whose impressive bulk can disappear in an instant into a stand of willows.
There was a time after the brain injury when Carly's dominant hand, her right hand, would have lacked the strength and tone to depress a camera's shutter — the device's gatekeeper of light.
The camera delivered light into Carly's life during a period of depression and anxiety that followed her full understanding of how the traumatic brain injury and accompanying physical limitations had affected, and would continue to affect, her life.
Rhonda recalled that time.
"Carly was really struggling, with anxiety and depression, emotional stuff that had started to surface," she said.
Carly explained.
"For a long time, I had been in La-la land, and then I started realizing what my injuries had cost," she said.
Carly's sister, Daridee, pitched the idea of photography. She believed a creative outlet for Carly could help liberate her from a dark spiral.
And it has.
Carly started shooting photographs with serious intent in 2021 but took steps in the preceding years to learn the craft.
Intensive physical therapy and speech therapy with professionals in Anaconda had helped her learn to walk, read and talk again. For a prolonged period after the crash, she could not speak because of damaged vocal cords.
Today, Carly's speech can be halting. The lingering effects of the brain injury limit her ability at times to find the right words, a condition that worsens when she feels under pressure to speak.
Carly's first camera was her iPhone, later replaced by a Sony digital and, more recently, a Canon mirrorless camera. Her mentor has been wildlife photographer Tom Curry of Anaconda.
"It began with Carly asking me to teach her to 'take pictures,'" Curry recalled last week. "I think it was late 2018.
"We began walking a city park in Anaconda with her using her iPhone," he said. "We first learned photographing a person from a full facial or a profile. We used the carving of a horse in a yard. Then ducks on a pond, then flowers.
"Carly was quite interested in my cameras — a Canon 5D SR and a 5D IV — so I let her shoot them," Curry said. "They were entirely too heavy for her."
He said Carly's early interest in photographing wildlife led him to advise her about how to anticipate an animal's movement so she could be set to shoot.
"Carly is excellent at reading animal and people's behavior," Curry said.
He said she readily understood key photographic elements, including fundamental concepts like shutter speed, ISO and f-stop, the amount of light that passes through the lens.
"Carly quickly grasped the three variables of photography, how they interrelate and how to use them to produce depth of field or stop the wings of an osprey," Curry said. "Carly is brilliant, and I have found that once I explain something to her, that's it. She has it."
He said Carly was skittish during an early outing to a bald eagle rookery near Anaconda because getting there required hiking through tall weeds.
"Carly was very afraid, walking behind me in my footsteps," Curry said.
"Today, Carly is fearless, almost leaping from my Jeep before it stops to stalk a moose. When Carly picks up her camera, she becomes 100% self-confident," he said.
Carly mustered a different sort of courage one day and approached James Rosien, editor of the twice-weekly Anaconda Leader, about occasionally publishing one of her photos. Rosien was enthusiastic and Carly was thrilled.
Later, she made the same pitch to The Montana Standard and received a similarly warm reception. Brett French at The Billings Gazette began to use Carly's photos in his Outdoors sections.
It seems clear that readers in southwest Montana would much rather see the mug of a moose on page one than the countenance of a politician.
Carly works part-time at the Goosetown Health Club in Anaconda. On days off, with either her father or Curry at the wheel of a four-wheel-drive vehicle, Carly searches the larger region for wildlife. Mike, who retired from the Golden Sunlight mine near Whitehall, grew up hunting and fishing around Anaconda and knows many likely wildlife haunts.
They include Georgetown Lake, the Skalkaho Road and upper Rock Creek, the Mill Creek Highway, the Big Hole Valley, the Warm Springs Ponds and even Washoe Park in Anaconda for nesting owls and pesky black bears.
Carly said wildlife photography has facilitated healing in numerous ways.
"It helped me with depression," she said. "It was just really, really hard when I started being more aware of (the brain injury's impacts)."
Mike said the quest for wildlife provides a sense of meaning and purpose and embeds Carly in nature and beauty — often in early morning, when the world is quiet and the light soft.
Carly added, "And I love my animals. Sometimes I'll talk to them."
She feels a special fondness for pronghorn antelope and their sleek and immaculate presentation.
"They're always so curious. They just stand there for a minute," Carly said.
She has learned that a young sandhill crane is called a "colt" and that a group of crows is called a "murder."
In recent years, Moodry has exhibited her photos during one-woman shows and the annual Wildlife Art Expo in Anaconda. The latter will be Sept. 27–29.
Sales have been brisk but don't cover the costs of gas when out hunting wildlife photos with her father or Curry and print-making expenses. Carly and her parents say making money from her work has not been the goal.
"We're hoping sometime maybe to focus a little bit more on monetizing some of the work, but that's not why we're doing it," Mike said.
"I don't care about the money," Carly said. "I love what I do with my photography."
The focus has been healing.
"The photography makes us very proud," Rhonda said. "But it's so much more than that. We're thrilled that she's progressed, and she's had all this love and support."
Curry said he is regularly impressed by Carly's tenacity and intelligence. He said he once worked as director of emergency services at a Level 1 Trauma Center in Georgia and saw many patients who did not survive injuries less severe than Carly's.
"Carly is a complete miracle of God almighty," Curry said. "The years I have spent teaching Carly have been the most significant and fulfilling of my life."
Carly Moodry photos
