the spirit

A few days ago, as we walked across a little culvert bridge over a creek, Paul stopped suddenly and made a little speech. We have to stop at every bridge, he said, to look at the water and meditate and re-connect with the spirit of the land that is always there under the rush and noise of the highway. I think he was half-kidding, the flowery way he spoke; and yet underneath he meant it, and I laughed and underneath I loved it. There has always been something deep for me in flowing water.

So we've stopped at the streams. Some of them can amaze me, deep pools so clear you can see the bottom as though through a lens, some without a single ripple, shot through with sunlight, fish hanging motionless in the clear water.

The other day we stopped at a stream and looked up along its length, out of the loud rubbish-strewn world of the road into the green shadows of the woods. "Deer!" I said. And there they were, almost beyond sight they were so far and small; blurred phantoms of deer, moving as though in a dream. The deer at Plow Creek eat the garden, and seem so fearless of mankind it makes you angry, you despise them, they're like stupid cows with antlers that eat your crops by night; but I could have sworn these were a different species entirely. The deer from old stories, the deer the Indians hunted and thanked for their meat, the deer that lived their own wild, unseen life in these woods for years before we came. A doe moved slowly out into the water, drinking, her fawn following; two half-grown bucks lowered their heads to each other and began to spar, slowly, meandering back and forth, their movements seeming gentle in the distance and the dimness. How can I explain it? They were beautiful. They were more beautiful than any deer I've seen up close; probably more beautiful than any deer could be, seen up close. I think they were beautiful because they didn't know we were there.