Deer Sighting

For the last several nights, deer have been visiting the street shortly before midnight. I have been unable to see them, as the moon has been behind them, and they keep mostly to the shadows, but I have heard their hooves on the pavement. Tonight, the moon was still high when they came, and although the adult deer once again slipped into the shadows of the pines when they heard my door open, a fawn remained standing in a patch of moonlight, just across the street from my house. I stood on my porch, and we looked at each other for a moment. The fawn seemed curious, rather than suspicious, (as the older deer are.) I had the feeling that it would have liked to get a closer look at me but, realizing that the adults had slipped away, decided to follow them instead. I heard them a few minutes later, clopping on the asphalt of the cross street along the orchard. Then, there was only the night silence, broken by the occasional clatter of acorns falling on roofs.

Autumn Evening Deja Vu

Certain varieties of maple are the first trees to turn red here. They stand out here and there among the evergreens and the oaks which as yet have only a few leaves which have turned brown. In the very late afternoon, the maples are bright flaming spots in the tranquil landscape.

The street was already in shadow when I walked east in the cool air, with all the trees bright above me. At the edge of town, where the land rises to the last ridge, the dried grasses of the still-sunlit field were bright. Above the bright trees that border the field, the pale moon, nearly full, floated like a translucent bubble in the blue bath of sky. Idly, I kicked the freshly fallen acorns to the verge of the road.

At the top of the hill, a group of boys, still immortal, were playing soccer in the intersection. The sound of the ball being kicked, and bouncing on the pavement, and the sound of their exuberant shouts, followed me as I continued south along the last street. As the noise of their game faded, I heard the chattering sound of a lawn sprinkler in a front yard, and saw the water arc up into the nearly horizontal rays of the sun, where the droplets glittered and a golden mist rose toward the burnished treetops. An invisible cloud of moisture drifted across my path, chilly and fresh.

A bit further down the street, a pair of cats sat on a front porch, having their after-dinner wash. At the last cross street, I looked west, and saw the three pine trees at the end of the block silhouetted against silver and dusty blue streaks of cloud which hovered above the golden blaze of sunlight filling the horizon. Just past the cross street, at the road's end, where an unpaved but gated drive plunges down toward some mystery among the shadowy woods, I gazed out across the canyon. Beyond the treetops, the distant ridges were barely visible in the evening haze rising from the river. To the west, the trees broke the last bright rays of sunlight into golden shards.

Walking home, the fading streets were full of the smell of dinners cooking, and the boys had left their game. A few crows flew above, and the lines of cloud in the west turned lavender and pink, and then violet. In the east, the moon steadily brightened and began to cast faint shadows across the roads.

I wonder how many times I have done this, now? Hundreds, I should think. Yet, somehow, I have never grown tired of walking through the passage from day to night. It always leads to the same place. It always leads to calm.