Deer Trails & Deep Winter

Thoughts on What Sustains

Video by Carrie Newcomer “Front Porch TV”

The snow has been falling steadily in South Central Indiana. It’s coming down in great big flakes, the kind of snow that when I train my eyes on a single flake and follow it down, it is like watching a raft of snow geese floating in for a landing. The video I’ve posted was taken on my front porch which is wide and deep with a sizable overhang and because we are built into a hill it feels a bit like being in a treehouse. Today when I stepped out the front door, the wooden overhang and stone walls framed forest and winter scene like the most perfect gallery painting. It quite literally took my breath away.

Earlier today I went out snowshoeing with my dogs. We hiked down a path that wanders along a creek, the banks soften and rounded, the cold water edged with ice formations. I followed the deer trails along the creek and then up the hill and into the woods. The snow was deep and Ella was enjoying breaking a trail, brown ears and white bits flying in her wake. The climb was strenuous, and about halfway up the hill I stopped next to a deep ravine, where a small group of deer had sheltered for the night. There were tracks leading to the grove and impressions left where the deer had rested, with brown leaves and pawed dirt along the edges. When ever I come upon such a momentary haven, there is a sense of stumbling into a mystery. I removed my mitten for a moment, and touched the glittering ground with two fingers—a simple acknowledgement, the receiving of a blessing, the bestowing of a benediction that honored the presence of soft brown creatures that shared shelter and warmth in the cold, that rested and then rose at dawn, noses to the wind, in search of something to eat and knowing that spring was still a long way off.

There are a lot of deer in these woods, which love my raised bed gardens in the summer, waiting until the tomatoes are pink to come through in one night and eat them all. I often tell people that our home was carved out of the woods and the woods wants it back. Several years ago I decided to only plant things I planned to give up to the birds and critters, or that in general were not appealing to deer or rabbits. So I keep planting herbs and rhubarb, onions and garlic as well as ferns, wild berries and things I’ve transplanted from the forest. When I encounter deer on my walks I sometimes sing to them. Sometimes they listen, heads lifted and ears rolling a little, and eventually return to their browsing and move slowly away. In an area with many hunters, to sense the presence of a human being is to be on guard, but over these many years, the sound of a low voiced woman singing has somehow now part of what they drink on the wind. Even when they still come through and eat my zinnias or something else they haven’t ever eaten before, I still love their liquid brown eyes, their elegantly legs, the way they leap as if they are nearly weightless, and I guess the sense that even in world that sometimes feels so inhospitable to what is yet untamed, I still live among wild things.

On my hike today I did not see the deer, but I followed their trails along the ridgeline, enjoying the light, the snow and quiet until and after about an hour returned home to find a multitude winter birds flocking to my front porch and garden feeders, hopping on the ledges, feathers fluffed and taking turns at the suet. Every now and then they would scatter as I heard the scree and cry of a red tail hawk circling somewhere nearby.

Winter by its very nature is not an easy time. It is a time of hanging on and hanging in there. It is a time when traditionally people were much more mindful of resources and after the harvest celebrations settled in to making necessary things last. Deep winter is when we know that spring is still a long way off. But those of us who grew up in areas of the world with four distinct seasons know that it is a long haul from harvest to spring, and yet we also know that getting to those first green shoots is completely possible. We know that you have to put on appropriate gear and get out in the cold and stay active. We know the joy of raspberry preserves and canned salsa that still tastes of summer. We know the practical sturdiness of root vegetables in soup. I also know that by the end of February, when folks in the Midwest are ardently rereading their seed catalogs, I will ache with such a longing for running water in the creek and the first spring flowers, and that I’ll start to dream of all things blooming, singing in the dark and knitting things in brighter colors.

We are entering into a time of great challenge and uncertainty. Folks this is winter, so let’s be real. It’s going to be a long four years. This is not business as usual, this is something new that will take all our hope and care and love and courage to brave and resist.

So let us be like the deer in their winter coats lifting their noses to the wind, like the birds that endure in the bitterest cold, like the trees that stand strong and rooted in community, like the seeds that are gathering energy for the next growing season, like the hawks that circle in defiance. In this time of winter we know how to not just survive but thrive until spring comes, like the ancestors we know how to lean into what matters most, how to gather and share what supports and sustains us individually and as a community.

Yes, it is winter and the snow is falling thick and heavy. But there is still beauty in all this brokenness, we’ve survived and even thrived through the hardest winters in the past, and together- yes together - we can do this hard thing.

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Question

What do you think this idea of “wintering” as a time to sense more deeply what matters, what sustains and what is beautiful even when the cold winds blow and the snow is falling?

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Music Always Music

This song was written in a hotel room when I’d been on the road a bit too long and missing my sweetheart. It’s called “Cedar Rapids 10 AM” and appeared on my The Beautiful Not Yet recording. You can listen to the full album here. I was thinking about all the many times my husband Robert and I have walked the ridgeline path, talking about life and art, hope and grief, supporting one another and laying down all our burdens for awhile. It seemed like a good song to post, now in a time of wintering.

This is a poem I wrote after encountering some deer in a field on my way home. 

In the Hayfield

Last evening,
As I drove into this small valley,
I saw a low-hanging cloud
Wandering through the trees.
It circled like a school of fish
Around the dun-colored hay bales.
Reaching out its foggy hands
To stroke the legs of a perfect doe
Quietly grazing in a neighbor's mule pasture.
I stopped the car
And stepping out into the blue twilight,
A wet mist brushed my face,
And then it was gone.
It was not unfriendly,
But it was not inclined to tell its secrets.

I am in love with the untamed things,
The cloud, the doe,
Water, air and light.
I am filled with such tenderness
For ordinary things:
The practical mule, the pasture,
A perfect spiral of gathered hay.
And although I should not be,
Consistent as it is,
I am always surprised
By the way my heart will open
So completely and unexpectedly,
With a rush and an ache,
Like a sip of cold water
On a tender tooth.

By Carrie Newcomer  (From A Permeable Life: Poems & Essays)

One Inch Photos

orange moss, snow and bark, birds in winter