With The Deer

I awoke this morning in the darkness before dawn light. Tendrils of an uncertain dream webbed my eyes. They loosened and vanished, then I saw the dawn. I read the philosopher Algis Uzdavinys for an hour of peace, until the day announced its intention to stay shrouded in overcast, with clouds bunched in huge motionless masses. Something rebelled within me, something that desired another kind of light. I left my apartment in a mission I barely understood. I drove to an urban park, and parked in an empty lot. On a deserted lane, lined with bushes and trees, I stopped abruptly: staring at me curiously but without fear stood an adolescent deer. We were fewer than fifteen tremulous feet apart, I could breathe her lack of fear. Three minutes, give or take, we accepted each other's stern scrutiny. The wonder of it filled my heart, and I had to believe something akin to wonder imbued her with the same poise. I slowly edged past her. She turned her head and followed my retreat until trees drew a curtain between us. My hope was fulfilled: a wild thing stood on common ground with me, and never flinched nor ran. She welcomed me. I walked on a boardwalk through a marsh, the water completely covered by pale green expanse of algae. Red-winged black birds perched on the swaying water plants. All was still. The only motion was my human self. On the far side of the marsh, I was about to re-enter the forest, but at the threshold stood a mother deer in front of her two offspring. This was no slumming adolescent, taking a risk with her own being. This was the serious business of survival. She raised and lowered her head, again and again. Was it a warning, or an appeal? I took it as an appeal: I turned around and walked away, never looking back. I thought, such is the entirety of things: a female deer lets me pass, a mother deer blocks my way. On another path, I crossed paths with a young mother and her two children. I told her about the mother deer and her two young just ahead. Before the mother could speak, her daughter said with casual certainty, 'I know those two baby deer. They visit me everyday in my yard. They chew on apples.' Then she skipped ahead to join her brother. The mother shared a smile with me, there was no need for speech. Rain was starting to fall in heavy fat drops, and we went our opposite ways. As I drove home, my smile did not fade: a young deer had admitted me to the garden, in her luminous brown eyes I was a just man. And I earned the regard of a mother deer by withdrawing, simply by going another way. I hope in some way the deer felt my love for them, a pure love for wild things....