Oh Deer!

Yesterday I saw a doe meandering through our back yard. She is the first deer I’ve seen in the yard since last year before the city removed all of the ash trees in the park area adjacent to our lot and across the pond.

Oh Deer!

Unfortunately as soon as I raised the window shade to photograph her, she was alarmed by the flash of movement and fled. Isn’t she beautiful?

The Faces of Deer

When for too long I don’t go deep enough
into the woods to see them, they begin to
enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the
pinewoods of my inner life. I want to live a life
full of modesty and praise. Each hoof of each
animal makes the sign of a heart as it touches
then lifts away from the ground. Unless you
believe that heaven is very near, how will you
find it? Their eyes are pools in which one
would be content, on any summer afternoon,
to swim away through the door of the world.
Then, love and its blessing. Then: heaven.

   — Mary Oliver

I love watching wild creatures in the yard. They bring me contentment and joy.

Over the course of each year I am often amazed at the wildlife that I see in our yard. I’ve seen woodchucks, muskrats, deer, fox, ducks, geese, owls, hawks, blue herons, turtles, frogs, voles, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and more.

Along with those creatures there are myriads of insects, multitudes of plant life and a plethora of fungi, bacteria and other unseen life forms in the soil.

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

Plentitude

We are only one species among uncountable numbers of life forms on the earth.

In the midst of such plentitude, I discover hope and peace. Life and the earth will go on, even if it changes beyond recognition.

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

   — Wendell Berry

Wishing you a hopeful and peaceful weekend.

May you walk in beauty.