The Fawn

In all my years of tromping through the boondocks I have never witnessed a birth in the wild. I've seen young fawns and cubs and pups and kits and chicks. I've seen kills but never births. This morning that changed.

Way up deep in the recesses of our property lies an exquisitely beautiful and isolated site which we rent out to campers. We border state land, so, essentially, hikers and campers have 250,000 acres in which to roam. Talk about social distancing, you're literally off the grid. However, if the demons get you, wi-fi is available on our front porch, one half mile south, just down hill. 

This morning I was guiding a camper to the site when a huge white tail doe (I've never seen bigger) not ten yards away sprang up out of the grass, took a single bound and turned to face us, dared us to take one more step. That's when I saw this little tiny thing, slick and wet, quivering, unable to stand - newly born - moments old - maybe even seconds - newly on this earth - and Mom, bristling like a phalanx, ready to do battle for her baby. I gaped at the thing, so naked and helpless. I held the mother's eyes. She stomped. Her warning. Mesmerizing as the two of them were, it would have been cruel to stand there, so we moved on. She was still there when I passed by on my way back down, already poised and battle ready, sprung from the tall grass, standing over this little thing, still wet and quivering, now trying for its feet, failing, bleating. Some would say this was a miracle, this birth, this singular event, but I think, really, it's the culmination of events that began when the days grew shorter and the sunlight less. A stag, perhaps more than one, took her, and she carried the seed of what would become this fawn through the harsh winds of our winter months on a starvation diet, avoiding predators, and yarding up for warmth when the weather became unbearable, even for her. And then the weather breaks, and the boisterous jays go away and the tree frog pipers come back, and this tiny thing continues to grow in her belly until, finally, the grass is high enough to hide her, and she gives birth. But it is not just one singular sensation; the miracle has been happening all along. Watch for it. Black Elk, a Sioux mystic, claimed the Holy Land is everywhere, not just a sandy spot in the Middle East. Do I need to believe in God to be astonished?