fawns in the snow...are they having fun?

When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint’s Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin’s Bay.

The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room.

In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard where I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles.

buck in the snow

However, if one designs to construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.

I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind.

Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night; and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting.

Which is why I don’t really begrudge them the geraniums and hydrangeas they scavenged from my deck. But my prize rex begonia that I’d grown to massive magnificence—that was heartbreaking to see bitten down to the soil.

With coddling, my begonia may survive, but the truth is, some of this deer herd will not. Cougars, bobcats and coyotes roam these woods just waiting for a deer to falter or venture off alone. That’s the horrible beauty of the food chain—everyone is food for someone else. Even us. When we wander into the seas or the wild woods, we’re tempting sharks and bears to help themselves.

But we can offer ourselves to our fellow humans in less all-consuming ways. We can nurture one another. We can feed on one another’s kindness.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What spirit food have you provided lately?
• Who could you offer nourishment?
• What parts of your self are you now willing to share with others?

I always wonder about the year’s new fawns—born in the lush month of June, their early days are filled with dining at an endless buffet of tender greens. How do they wrap their young minds around the diminishing of their food supply? It must come as such a shock at the age of just four months to realize they don’t live in perpetual summer. They seem so stoic later in the year, calmly, silently enduring winter. But then their world is always only about survival—each day they must make wise decisions or risk that being their last day.

it's good for her survival that this doe doesn't trust me

I’m grateful not to live with the constant fear I see in the eyes of the does and fawns who live all around me. My dog and I startle them often just by our sharing the same space. The lone bucks are different though. Late yesterday I went for a bike ride along the edge of the woods and came upon a solitary six-point male. I slowed way down to admire him, and he didn’t budge. I could have reached out and touched him. We held each other’s gaze, and I hope he felt my respect. Is it the constant weight of his imposing antlers that inspires his confidence and bravura? Does he feel superior to me on my silly pink bicycle? I watched him leave the open field where he’d been munching and amble across the road and into the woods—unafraid of me. Perhaps he was daydreaming of evergreen fields and endless summer. I hope we both get to enjoy a mild winter.

May he never hunger.

And may he never hunger for begonias!

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What things or experiences are you hungry for right now?
• How will you satiate your desire?
• How are you attuning your life to the changing season?

Read about other animal allies here…geese and crows and eagles and whales.