“Have you ever seen a deer so small, it’s like the size of
my dog,” Brad* said.
“I didn’t realize it was dead,” I said when we decided to
get out of the car. Its head had been
smashed in. It was the smallest fawn I’d
ever seen and the blood had collected in a small puddle around its ear. Its eyes were open and lifeless.
I stood over the body and the cars seemed fast so close to us
as they swished by. This is man and
nature colliding, I thought.
“We can’t just leave it here,” Brad said.
“I’ve got my medicine bag in the car,” I said as I crossed
the busy street more carefully than the doe had attempted. We didn’t have a lighter so we prayed over
the body and sprinkled sage and copal over it.
Brad closed its eyes before lifting its body and carrying it into the
woods to place behind a tree. We both squatted
there and Brad and I both saw it breathing.
Brad said its body was stiff, though I hadn’t touched it.
The sunlight crept through the trees and the shadows danced
on the fawn’s belly. The belly inflated
and deflated again. Brad and I crouched there looking at one another in disbelief. This was magic. This was sacred. This was real. We both bore witness to the miraculous dance
in the time that exists between the living and the dead.
There have been many studies done where people don’t see
things because they don’t expect to see
things. How many things do we miss in
our awareness because we believe it to be unbelievable or perhaps unexpected? The mind is a very powerful thing - it can train itself to react to a very strict reality, but what happens when you begin to open those windows of consciousness? When those rules that dictate reality begin to bend so slightly? How much more aware will you be? How much more will you see?
*The name was changed.
