my whitetail friends

I saw two whitetail deer on my walk up Grassy Mountain today. I also saw two whitetail deer on my walk up Grassy Mountain yesterday. I wonder if they’re the same. My whitetail friends. That idea makes me think of the surrounding natural world as a small town where everybody knows everybody.

“Hey, Danny! Hey, Jolene!” I want to say to my whitetail friends, already giving them names in my head.

“Hey, Hamlet! How ya doin’?” I imagine them saying back.

I want to grab coffee with my whitetail friends at the local diner. Catch up about how the local Grassy Mountain HOA is treating them, and how their buttonbucks are doing. They’re growing up so fast. Come across anyone trying to shoot you lately? They’ll ask me about human things like how the latest James Bond movie was, or how work is going, or what I have planned for the holidays, or if anyone has tried to shoot me lately. We’re not so different.

Instead they bound through the cold woods, crunching on falling leaves, away from me. We’re not friends. They’re frightened of my presence. I’m a human encroaching on their world. A wooded mountain in North Carolina on a cold November morning shouldn’t be for me. It should be for them. It makes me feel a sharp pang of guilt that I’ve disturbed their peaceful morning walk through the woods. Ours seems like a nonsymbiotic relationship, one that is all give and no take on the part of my whitetail friends. Unbalanced. Their presence fills my morning walk with peace and gratitude. My presence disturbs them and gives them reason to flee.

But nature is necessary. Nature is paradoxical. Nature requires you to be in it to appreciate its splendor. It also requires you to go away to maintain its splendor. Balance. So I simply keep walking.

I hope to see my whitetail friends again tomorrow.