It’s September when the pear trees are a burden of ripe fruit with no one here to pick them. For the three days since I arrived I’ve been cleaning the Florida farmhouse, watching the deer, when I see them, feeding from the ground under the pear trees or on hind legs off laden branches. When I step out the sliding door, becoming still but visible on the brick-colored patio under a sloping tin roof, their forelegs drop and soft ears point in my direction. They are graceful, agile, and alert—and company for me.
I come out mid-afternoon to walk to the meditation studio, but stop as the bright oculus of the sky instantly disappears and wind whips leaves toward my surprised face, turning quickly to check the loss of light. The studio is a good place to go. Later, leaving, a walk seems right, as I haven’t yet been around the perimeter of the field, being too busy settling in.
Milking boots catch the rhythm that sway aside grasses left unmown since mid-summer and by now at my knees. My casually tossed words for snakes to stay clear are heard amid the swishing. I stop at a cactus to study how it climbs higher by each of its two pale-green, prickly mitts narrowly attached to a brother underneath. Floating among the tops of grasses, I see tiny, daisy-like, white flowers poking up from tall, thin stems. “Fleabane?” I’ll look in the wildflower book tomorrow.
At the first pear tree I weigh the view, considering I don’t eat pears. What a shame. But wait—I could serve the deer a free meal. So stooping under branches lower than my height, I reach up into the tree and plant my hand on one bunched on a stem. It’s warm. I’m surprised and smile, give a tug, and it drops. The second clips me on the chin and I smile, this time with a sound of pleasure. Laughing, I pull down three then say, “Three more,” and they clunk to earth.
By the end of my meandering I’m tired, but in the sanctuary of the farm, I find a feeling of renewal from the spacious field and sky and the insects’ and grasses’ voices of the otherwise quiet. The open sliding door beckons to me. Turning in the living room to look back out, I see deer where I’ve just been, but hungry myself I don’t wait for them to find their gift of plentiful pears.
In Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson, deer medicine asks us to be gentle with others and ourselves.
My realization is, “To learn from deer the power of gentleness may transform us in our relationships and open us to our oneness with Earth’s wildlife.”