Minor Adventure With A Deer

When animals seem "friendly" or "curious" - it's hard for us not to wonder if we're having meaningful relationship. 

I had been scything "thugs" - aggressive plants - that can derail the recovery of biodiversity. It's complicated; let's forget that part for now.

To put it differently, I was working quietly in the ecosystem, chopping down some plants while protecting other dense, beautiful vegetation. The work is compelling and meditative in a fun, relaxing kind of way. Looking up to check a sound, I'm face to face with a young deer.

She was about 10 feet away. Why so close? Whatever, many deer treat us in this comfortable way, when we're focused on something else. 

I sometimes talk with deer as they approach. Not that I think they understand my words, but it seems neighborly to speak in a calm and lighthearted way, and I suppose my words become meditative thinking on another level. 

In this case I said, "Well, thanks for joining me. I suppose you focus so much on these plants that you can't help wonder what I'm doing with them." She kept moving, but not getting closer or farther away. "Are you going to walk a circle around me?"

Indeed, she did walk a circle around me. I went back to work. She ate as she walked. 

I meditated out loud that we were in this together: "You'd be happy if you understood what I'm doing. Without so-called 'stewardship' - this open oak woods would soon be dense with tall goldenrod and the other thugs, none of which you like to eat." It's true. She can't eat most of that we cull. Thuggish plants tend to be toxic to her. So we're on the same side, in that sense.

She doesn't respond verbally, but she speaks with her presence. Indeed, she completes that circle around me. Staying close. Eating and joining in the refreshing shade on this warm day. 

She's in the Shooting Star zone of Somme Woods. This area was dense buckthorn seven years ago. Little sunlight penetrated. There was little food here for deer or anything else. But rather rare and conservative shooting stars survived here in large numbers. So we prioritized this area to cut the brush and restore the sedges, grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs that the buckthorn had shaded out. And of course, we restored fire. 

The plants blooming in the photo above are sweet black-eyed Susan (yellow) and great blue lobelia, but she and I are standing among more than one hundred uncommon species that are here because we cut the buckthorn, controlled the invasive thugs, and planted restorative seeds. She and I both feel good about this place. 

If you know your plants and look hard at these photos you can also identify tall coreopsis, wood reed, Virginia rye grass, and riverbank rye. Because I know this area, I also feel in the presence of Ridell's goldenrod, willow aster, fringed gentian, gayfeather, and the Threatened species Viola labradorica - most of which she'll eat - not too much I hope. 

By this last photo, the doe has traveled a circle and a half around me. It's been good. But I've finished my work in this spot and drift away, finding more thugs to scythe. At some point I notice that she's gone. It's an experience to wonder about. Wild nature is like this.