encounters — blog 2

It's so cold I don't doubt what the online weather said: 13 degrees, feels like -5. It's near silent except for muffled traffic rushing in the distance. The air is crisp and clear as I walk behind a fence row dividing city homes from the park. Light snow covers the frozen ground. Every step a crunch. At the end of fence and houses, I enter the trees, and just a few steps in, a deer bounds away. I didn't even see it till its body bounded through the air. He doesn't go far, so I take a few, slow steps until we're in each others sight—an eight point buck, staring at me, snorting and stamping. We're breathing the same cold air. Our breath white. Another step. Another step. He stamps. Another ste—he bounds away, and another deer follows down the hill and through the brush. Gone.

I prowl and step slow. I listen, but they're gone. Following the way they went, I walk toward a flat spot among the trees, absent of brush. The trees are few and thin; the leaves and ground are compressed. I realize, this is where they sleep. The ground is white, except a cluster of vague ovals of open ground, where their bodies and leftover heat melt light snowfall. I stay back from their area and notice a lock-box mounted at waist height on a nearby tree, pointed directly at their quarters. Hmm, hunting or observation? Someone else is watching the deer.

It's surprising to see deer on consecutive trips. I stumbled upon them the first time, and this time, I've returned to their tramping ground. And maybe it's not that surprising, these white-tail deer (either odocoileus virginianus or o. v. borealis) are actually “the most commonly found wild ungulate” in the Americas. This group may have limited movement through Frick Park in the winter, I'm unsure. If snow isn't deep, they dig with their hooves to find moss and leaves. If there's heavy snow, white-tail eat twigs and branches. And it seems this area provides two distinct advantages. Their resting spot is near big patches of grass and winter-growing flora, from the clearing to backyards. The area rests on top of a hillside as well, which provides almost puts them in an intelligently strategic advantage for evasion and defense.

I head down the hill and weave through brush, silent as possible, through lumps of leaves covered in snow. Over the muffled tires and traffic, I hear something through the trees. It sounds like the clack of horns. A buck rubbing his rack against the bole of a tree? I hear it again. Two bucks fighting? With well-placed steps I head half way down the hill until I see something move below, a dark lump obscured by brush. It moves around. Oh, it's some guy in a black jacket and hat, gathering things, moving stones, throwing sticks. What's this creature doing?

I come out of the brush and onto the trail. Bike tracks and foot prints are pressed in the snow. Inarticulately, I think of Thoreau and preconceived notions of Nature and Solitude. I keep on the trail and keep my distance from the creature. He doesn't pay much attention to me, probably used to my type. I walk by, and he continues his work. There's a backpack sitting on a stump, and the ladder from last week is on its side. From him, from the wind? I think the milkjugs moved, but I'm not sure. What's he doing? It's my instinct to stay at a distance and wonder, instead of breach contact. I wasn't expecting him, and don't necessarily like that he's there. The spot was silent and solitary last week, and I expected the same. His presence, and not only that, his presence in my—my?—territory. This disjointed encounter stirs an odd feeling.

Later, at home, after reading and writing and studying, I wonder if that man has ever read Wendell Berry's “Stay Home.” Why hadn't he stayed home? Or was he at home? Was he the narrator and I the reader, or vice versa? “Don't come with me … I will be standing in the woods … Don't come with me.” This man disrupted 'my nature.' Maybe I interrupted his. I unconsciously sought solitude from humans and company with animals and the inanimate. Was he doing the same? Shit, I don't know. I didn't ask.

Seriously, why was his presence in a spot I expected to be empty so jarring? I'd seen the signs of others, direct signs of him actually—he was working on the unfinished stone steps—but I didn't expect the encounter. I didn't stop to talk, just followed down to the lowest point, then back up and out of the park.

At home, I wonder how the deer feel about us. Am I as unexpected to them as the man was to me? What do they expect each day? So alert. Do they expect nothing or always something? Do deer live with definitions and expectations? Shit, I don't know.