I started my day with a walk. Begrudgingly, I gave up my second cup of coffee and morning respite, the calm after the storm, knowing that it was going to be sweltering by mid day. As I entered the park, something caught my eye. A still wiry spring fawn was having a little breakfast not thirty feet from me. We looked at one another...both of us...with curiosity instead of fear. It was a little bit thrilling. And then the darnedest thing happened.
Out of the shadows of a low hanging tree, another deer emerged. She was only slightly larger than her companion, but by the way she positioned herself between the fawn and me, I thought she was likely the mama. She kept her eyes firmly planted on me until I turned to walk away. I was unusually touched by being watched so carefully by the doe eyed creature.
The air was thick with the scent of sun ripened apples. It occurred to me that was likely what the deer were standing their ground for. They love apples. I found the path was littered with more than decaying fruit though. Maple leaves in the soon to be season's first and finest oranges, reds and yellows danced in the breeze as well.
The prairie leg of the path was a grasshopper highway this morning. They lined the way like wee soldiers in erratic formation. Every once in awhile I would feel the sharp sting of one of their steely bodies flying into instead of away from me. Delicate white seedlings glistened like spun silver in the sun as they wafted by. Set free from surrounding willows or poplars or cottonwoods, or perhaps, all three.
As I rounded the pond, I surprised a lone bittern with a beak full of waterlogged reeds. Then as if on cue, I looked up to see the most familiar of fall formations: a wedge of geese flying in a v. Their incessant honking always strikes me as desperate and panicked. The call to migrate south makes me both happy and sad.
