My friend, Gavin Stevens, recently happened upon a doe and fawn, and the sighting inspired significant thoughts about life, its fragility and the physical and delicate fragility of deer as a sign of beauty, which, of course, it is.
I see the same beauty in leafless boughs reaching to a darkening sky; occasionally in a spider’s web that stretches across what must be a gaping chasm to the spider that wove it; in a spindly fern sparkling with the morning’s dew; with ancient pilings, the skeletons of bygone fish landings, their tops rotted and broken, poking up into a morning’s mist that rises slowly like a drifting cloud from a quiet river.
Quite different from all of this and Gavin’s coming upon a doe and fawn, was a one time experience of mine with deer that created a linkage, in the most subtle way, and brought to my mind that we are all of the same spirit, sprung from the same source, brothers, or at least distant cousins, in a sense.
I was alone down river on the Columbia. A warm, gorgeous summer day. It was the kind of a day when there is something holy about being by one’s self, drifting with the current of the river and with the current of life. I motored out of the moorage at Cathlamet, raised the sails and headed downstream. It was mid-morning and still windless, and I drifted with the current. The first landmark of consequence below Cathlamet is the little town of Skamokawa. There a small stream empties into the Columbia, and the flat marsh lands and meadows below Cathlamet end. The land suddenly rises quite dramatically, becoming steep, forested slopes. At the base, here and there, a fringe of pebbled beach joins the water. Lewis and Clark had paddled through this stretch of the river long ago.
As I said, it was a warm, lazy day, and I was content to drift with the river’s current and let my thoughts turn over slowly in keeping with the day’s tempo. I had hove to so that the boat kept its heading, and it and I meandered along indifferently not too far from shore. As I sat there in the cockpit, letting the goodness of the sunshine infiltrate my being, a flight of several little birds – swallows, I believe – flew close and twittered, almost as if they were hailing me and trying to get my attention. I was sitting near the end of the mainsail boom, and as they spun by, their tiny wings fluttering at high speed, their chirps and calls drew my eyes and sight along the boom toward the shore almost as if it were a pointer.
I stared unbelieving because the boom pointed toward several deer on the shore. It was almost as if those little birds had called to me to look. I changed the heading of the boat and drew very close to the narrow beach and the deer, remaining as quiet and motionless as it is possible to be in a moving vessel. The deer observed me but apparently saw no cause for alarm. They continued to browse or drink or do what they had been doing before I came upon them. Occasionally one of them would raise its head, turn its soft eyes upon me and, I felt, acknowledge my presence.
After a few moments, the river’s current took me past, and they were gone from my vision and I from theirs. Downstream, time moved on. I broke out a cold beer and a sandwich. Not too long after, the wind picked up from the northwest as it does in those parts in summer as a day progresses. I headed back upstream with a breeze at my back. Coming near the slopes and the beach where I had spotted the deer I cruised close to the shore. Amazingly, the deer were still there. They saw me, of course, seemed to nod in recognition, almost as if they had awaited my return. Then, having greeted me, they turned and disappeared up the slope into the trees.
Gavin saw beauty when he chanced upon the doe and fawn in the roadway. I saw beauty, too, with those deer on the shore, but I also felt a kinship, a connection, distant, perhaps, but real.
