by jphilo | Dec 22, 2010 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
A heat wave hit Monday. Twenty-two degrees at 7:00 AM, warm enough to walk outside for a change. So I bundled up and took advantage of the balmy weather.
From the looks of things, our yard has been crawling with critters during the week and a half I’ve been holed up inside. Our three inches of picture perfect snow is pock-marked with deer tracks. I’m not talking a meandering trail here and there, I’m talking a hooved frenzy, a dancing-in-the-moonlight conflagration, a forest full of Bambies in our back yard.
The situation is giving me the willies. Not just because we moved to the edge of town to get away from the crowds. No, I’m spooked because the greatest concentration of hoof prints – and we’re talking snow so full of holes it makes a bad case of teenage acne look good – are right outside our bedroom window.
So what’s with our four-legged forest friends? Are they a bunch of Peeping Bambies? Or are they so hungry for July and August that they’re munching the woody stems of the two Endless Summer Hydrangea bushes beside our bedroom window?
The second theory is preferable to the first. I mean, I love the hydrangeas and don’t want them to be some woodland creature’s lunch. But the thought of a crowd of eight point bucks and doe-eyed doe witnessing our age-related sleep apnea, timing our snores, and watching us drool on our pillows is enough to give a person insomnia.
But Hiram won’t be too excited if I suggest he slog through the snow and freeze his fingers while covering the hydrangeas with chicken wire. And we don’t have a BB gun to scare them off. So I have a different solution. I’ll hang a poster of my brother holding his shotgun and wearing his hunting vest in our bedroom window.
Take that, Bambi.
Take that, eight point buck.
Take that, doe-eyed doe.
Take that and find a different place to park your peepers. You’re weirding me out!
by jphilo | Nov 8, 2010 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
It happened again – another Marlin Perkins wildlife moment – near the same place as before on the walking trail. This time six deer, almost within touching distance, moseyed across the path near the little stream that runs through the cemetery and the woods. So there it was, the shot of deer I’ve been aching to capture for years, so close it would have been a fabulous shot, even without my telephoto lens. But because of my sore back thing, I was once again cameraless.
Sigh.
But it gets worse. (Or if my camera had been at hand, better.) The deer weren’t one bit frightened by a human presence. They didn’t bother hiding in the tall grass. No, they started grazing on the slope beside the walkway. Such a charming tableau, six deer nibbling at green grass beside the flowing, burbling stream, with an old stonework culvert as a backdrop.
Double sigh.
But it gets worse. (Or, to an equipped, think ahead photographer, even better.) Two of the deer, perhaps slightly unnerved by a whiff of female human stink, got up close and personal with a dainty doe. In the blink of an eye, they sipping mama’s secret recipe, warm and fresh from the spigot.
Triple sigh.
But it gets worse. (At least for Mama Doe.) Her two tipplers were not tiny, sweet spotted fawns. No, they were old enough to be spotless. Tall enough to look their flesh and blood faucet in the eye. Mature enough to munch grass after their little drinky-poo. Close enough to adult status that by the time I can lug the camera around, they won’t be nursing any more. As if I could ever get this close to six deer again. Which will never happen.
Quadruple sigh.
So my latest Marlin Perkins wildlife moment will forever be an in-the-moment moment.
The great shot that got away.
My personal digital fish tale with no one to collaborate or deny the story.
But it’s way worse for that poor doe, nursing teenage twins too lazy to pour their own milk and chop their own lettuce. Poor thing!
I wonder, do deer sigh?
by jphilo | Oct 11, 2010 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
For the past two weeks, we’ve been wallowing in a glorious Indian summer, the longest and warmest in years. Not only a prolonged warm stretch, but a dry stretch as well, the first since early June. We’ve been making up time lost to the summer’s rain and floods – grilling every chance we get, turning off the furnace, opening the windows, working in the yard.
And I’ve been walking a new route in the mornings, going farther than usual on these mild October mornings, exploring paths inaccessible much of the year because of heat, wind, rain or snow. In this brief window of perfect weather, with the horizon a golden halo of trees, I push past the comfort of normal routine. I push the limits of my body and the limits of time available to spend. I store up time outdoors on these last warm days before cold weather hits.
Most mornings deer greet me, where their path to water crosses the walking path. They eye me nervously. So I freeze, pull out my camera, snap away, then inch forward one slow step after another, snapping pictures until the deer turn tail and run. Down the steep bank they fly, to the water at the bottom of a steep ravine. I marvel at their sure-footedness, their grace and beauty, the brilliantly colored trees surrounding them, the music of the rushing water where they drink. I shiver in the chill air as dawn walks beside me.
If I could choose one moment for time to stand still, this would be the one.
An Indian summer morning. A blessing from God.
by jphilo | Jun 4, 2009 | Daily Life
Our little gravel road was hopping with activity at the crack of dawn today. The garbage truck came by before 6:00, and I was out walking by 7:15. The yearling doe was by the bridge when I got there. Either she snuck out when her mom wasn’t looking or Mom didn’t ground her forever. One way or the other, the two of us did some more bonding during a lovely photo shoot (I was camera-ready – hooray!) before she got skittish and ran into the woods.
Good thing we were both early birds. A few minutes later, the road grader lumbered by, and its operator lowered the blade. He’s been pretty scarce this spring, so I forgave him for shattering the morning quiet. The man barely had time to work up a good head of steam before the recycling truck came from the other direction. Watching them decide how to get past one another on a humpbacked gravel road so washed out it’s down to one narrow lane was most entertaining.
I had to alter my route to stay in front of and/or behind the road grader, and with all the interruptions it was hard to keep track of my goal, which was to walk four miles. The experience made me think about yesterday. The fam was home, the phone rang non-stop, a four-year-old entertained me for half an hour or I entertained him – I’m not sure which, emails interrupted my writing time, the doorbell kept ringing and bridesmaids streamed through the kitchen and up the stairs for dress fittings with Anne.
As I got less and less writing done on the day I’d hoped to write more and more, I grew testy. “Life would wonderful,” I muttered, “if it weren’t for all the people.” The more frustrated I grew, the more similar thoughts crossed my grinchy little brain, and the more I lost track of my goal: to show Christ to people, first by the way I live, and then through my writing. And if I don’t live right, why do I assume I can write right?
Today, thanks to three big trucks and one small doe, the goal is visible again, and that’s good. Accomplishing it won’t be so easy. But I’m going to try. What else can I do?
by jphilo | Jun 2, 2009 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
I’m really, really glad that the picture of the doe I took last week showed up. Turns out, I had moved it where I though I had. But I’d labeled it “doe” and not “deer” which was the word I entered in the search program.
But the reason I’m really, really glad I found it, other than the assurance that my brain is not full of more holes than Swiss cheese, is that this picture is my only consolation for missing the deer picture of the summer this morning. For the first time in weeks, I left my camera home because the weather was wet, sprinkling in fact, when I walked – not enough to need an umbrella, but enough to damage a camera.
A little voice told me I’d be sorry, but it stayed quiet during my first lap when, unlike me, the critters and birds had sense enough to stay out of the rain. But the second time I came down the hill toward the bridge, a small doe stood in the road, trembling and still. I stopped and we eyed one another for a small eternity. Eventually, the deer lifted a slender leg, the diameter of it’s ankle smaller than my wrist, and stepped toward me once, twice, then a third time. Quivering, head jerking up and down, tail flitting from side to side, it finally came to a halt, not ten feet away from me.
I reached for my camera, then remembered it was at home. I sighed, the deer watching me, me watching the deer, until I took a tentative step in its direction. Apparently, I came one step too close. The deer hightailed it for the trees. (Please note: “hightailed” is not a cliche here. It is what happened.)
“Should I pick up my camera at the end of this lap?” I asked myself. “Nah, It can’t happen twice.”
That’s when the little voice piped up again. “It can too.”
“Pish, posh,” I sniffed as the rain intensified. I left the camera home.
When I neared the bridge, the deer was there again, munching at the undergrowth. From what I could tell, the little animal, a yearling from the looks of her, considered me her trusted friend. I slowed and approached her. She watched me, then went back to eating while I walked past, about eight feet away. And me without my camera. Again.
I walked one more lap, with the camera in tow, daring the rain to to rain on my camera or my parade. It didn’t, but the doe was a no show. Maybe her mother found her, scolded her for trusting strangers, and grounded her for a month. But maybe not. Maybe tomorrow, my new girlfriend will meet me at the bridge.
If she’s there, I’ll be ready, rain or shine, my camera in a Ziplock bag if need be. It’s the only way to silence the little voice in my head which continues to chant, “I told you so, I told you so,” in rhythm with the raindrops and the sighing wind.
