The 4:00AM call was on. Quick. Mostly in Japanese. It was important to be there but little was expected of yours truly. The five AM got cancelled. It often does. I wondered about getting back into bed at that point. Must have been the paper what did it. I read one and then another article in the New York Times and then the Washington Post and soon I was heating up a cup of yesterday’s coffee and welcoming the dawn.
Deer, hungry, desperate suburban deer are out here regularly. They’re cocky. You can’t just scare them by showing up. There’s always one who’s the punk of the pack who stares at you while you throw rocks that miss and acorns that don’t matter. But today, down below, a dozen deer passed by. It must be that two or three extended families have decided to get together and graze as one.
Today, I had to admit the skiing wasn’t good. It’s been so wonderful of late. Today there was simply and icy covering that had no forgiveness. It was only thirty degrees out and whatever had melted the day before was now a forbidding grey covering. The sides, still too thick to allow for an easy progression. I ran out of time heading up to the orchard and turned around early to make my call.
Back home, under my hood I could hear the sound of deer, dashing off as I walked up into my yard. Sure enough I had heard correctly. Three deer were crashing off into the woods. And it occurred to me that it was a good thing that the deer had no natural predators. This was ultimately a good thing. Because if that sound had been something predatory, it could have taken my old-man ass out in a heart beat.
Tuesday, 03/02/21
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