Deer

“Doe, a deer, a female deer…”

I’ve lived with deer in my life one way or another since the day I was born, I think. I’ve lived in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States nearly all of my life and with that come the opportunities of seeing, touching, and hearing white-tailed and mule deer often.

One of my earliest memories of a deer isn’t necessarily the most pleasant memory that I have. When I was young, my father hunted every winter in the mountains of western Montana (where we lived). The meat he brought home was meat that we needed and was welcomed with open arms. We had a curing shed where the deer were hung and we were, as children, kept out of that shed. My parents felt that seeing a deer carcass was not the best thing for a child. They were, in retrospect, right in that decision.

One year, I remember Dad “bagging” a deer and bringing it home to skin and treat the meat. I don’t know why this happened but I went into the shed. I can remember a shadow of the deer hanging there. More, though, I remember the blood. It seemed, to me, that there was blood everywhere. I can smell the wood of the shed and the blood of the deer to this day.

As I grew older, deer continued to play a significant role in my life.

Visiting my grandparents in Colorado each summer, the yearly trips to Rocky Mountain National Park gave me the opportunity to see the famous Roosevelt elk and white-tailed deer each year. These deer are the biggest deer I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if they’ve inter-bred with the elk (Roosevelt elk are huge) or if they are extremely large because they live in a national park but their size has always struck me as abnormal.

I missed out on deer for a while when my family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. Even in the rural areas around Las Vegas, deer were not in abundance.

After four years in Las Vegas, we moved to Flagstaff. We were back in the mountains and at that time, Flagstaff was a relatively small town (less than 30,000 residents). The inhabitants of the town coexisted with the wildlife in a beautiful symbiotic manner. We would see deer come down off the mountain often.

We lived near the mountain and I would drive over a hill to go to work each night. There were nights when I could swear I would see deer on the hill. They would appear in the middle of the road and I would swerve or slow down to miss them but then I would realize that they weren’t there at all. It was the most unnerving thing to happen but it happened so often that I had a feeling the deer may be speaking to me.

A few years later, my sister-in-law and I were heading to Prescott for work and met up with a deer on I-17 at Rocky Park Road. It was a dark summer evening (no moon) and we were zipping along at 11 p.m. From the corner of my eye, I saw a deer on the right shoulder of the road. In less than a second, that same deer was in the middle of the road and I was changing lanes to avoid hitting him. I was unsuccessful. We hit him in the left lane, holding fast to the road. His antlers came through the windshield and hit my arm, his body crushed in the roof to an inch from our heads.

We were lucky. We walked away with minor injuries. He was not so fortunate. As the night wore on and we waited for the emergency vehicles to arrive (a trucker behind us had stopped and called while making sure we were ok), we heard him breathing in the ravine below us. I heard his ragged breaths turn into labored suffering.

That night, six deer were hit on I-17 within a 30-mile stretch of the road. Two people were killed. For some reason, the deer were out that night and needed to cross the highway.

My family called me a “bambi-killer” as they used humor to try to overcome the trauma I felt from the accident. I was distraught over having killed an animal. I was saddened by having to hear him die. I had nightmares for weeks. I couldn’t drive at night without seeing deer around every corner. When I would get to the Rocky Park area, whether going south or north, I would slow to dangerous speeds of 25 mph because I was afraid to hit another. If I fell asleep as a passenger in the car, I would wake up in terror the minute the driver would put on his or her brakes.

A few months later, after my car had been rebuilt, I took a chance and drove down I-17. I’ve never been a religious person but that night I began speaking to the deer and to the moon, asking for all of the earth’s children to be cared for as I drove down the road.

Two months ago, as I sat in my bedroom reading a book, I heard a rummaging outside my living room window. Since I live alone, I was a bit worried at the mysterious sound. I turned out the lights and slowly opened my curtains. As I peered out into the neighbor’s yard, I saw the largest rack of antlers that I have ever seen. This bull turned toward me, stared straight at me, and walked slowly out of the yard as if he owned it.

I can assure you that at that moment, he did.

A family friend, a medicine man from the Navajo nation, told me that he was sure my totem animal is a deer. I can see that. I can feel it. Deer speak to me.