Every action affects someone, something, somewhere. Nothing we do is in isolation or without impact. These facts of life hit me hard yesterday.
I set out on a long hike to complete the Tuscobia Segment of the 1,200-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail in Wisconsin. Most of the Tuscobia Segment’s 11.2 miles is a rails-to-trails section, an old railroad bed converted to multi-use trail which passes through beautiful countryside between small towns. As I was walking through an area where ponds were found on both sides of the trail, I spied a deer far in the distance standing on the trail—perhaps an eighth of a mile ahead. As I continued my shady hike along the lowlands, I could see the deer now in the sunlight and at the edge of what appeared to be a road crossing ahead. Looking harder, I could make out a fawn bouncing at its feet—so this was obviously a doe ahead. I slowed. Because she saw me, the deer turned to bound away, fawn in tow. I raised my hands in prayer form and said a silent prayer knowing how every road crossing is a chance crossing. Just then, I saw two trucks speed by. I held my breath. No honking. No screeching of brakes.
I felt dread with every step forward, afraid of what I would discover as I made my approach. It seemed I was in the middle of nowhere and everywhere all at once. No where to go but straight ahead to face whatever the chance crossing left behind. Immersed in a world where causes and effects are everywhere.
Just like the doe had no where to go but straight ahead, I continued on...
I took a breath and entered the clearing to step up to the roadside. I teared up immediately as I saw the fawn laying there on the far side of the road. No carnage. A lifeless body with a bloody ear sticking up from what was no doubt a head injury.
No-o-o-o, I heard myself saying as I crossed the road. Momma was no where to be seen as I scanned the far ditch and wetland there.
There was a small trail of blood from the impact. Minutes before, the fawn had been alive with its perfect spots to camouflage its body in the dappled sunlight on the forest floor. A few minutes before, it had been bouncing around at the feet of its mother. A few minutes before, she was instinctively caring for this baby.
I took off my backpack and set it at the trailhead, then returned to the fawn. I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I just left it there. I picked up its frail body in my arms, its fur so soft, its body warm and limp. Just then a car slowed as it passed me. I carried the fawn down into the steep ditch to lay it to rest there. When the doe returned to find her little one, I thought, perhaps she wouldn’t be in the way of another speeding vehicle, though, like me after my baby died in 1992, I didn’t care if I lived or died for awhile. I don’t know what deer feel, but I do know the instinct of protecting one’s baby is a strong one. No matter what, the reality of a loss would be felt. My heart was broken for the loss of the fawn, for the mom, and for myself and my baby all over again.
Everything happens for a reason. Naturally, I found myself asking “why” as I cried myself down the trail. There is so much we will never know about this world and this life of ours.
If I hadn’t been hiking there yesterday, would this accident have occurred? I’ll never know.
What I do know is that a few feet after my chance encounter, I nearly stepped on a garter snake in the trail. I halted mid-step just in time as the snake continued on its merry zig-zag way. A snake is powerful medicine—transmutation, as Native American medicine people tell us. The act of changing or the state of being changed into another form. This synchronicity was not lost on me through my tears.
Still later, perhaps a mile away, another doe stood in the trail with her fawn. The fawn began to suckle. I found myself thinking, what are the chances of a second doe-fawn encounter for this hiker? Like before, I slowed to give them time and distance until the doe turned to run ahead around a bend with her fawn behind her. I prayed for no road crossings. There were small lakes on both sides of the trail again—not preferred places to lead a little one. Thank heaven, there was no road, and the doe’s tracks showed safe passage into an uplands beyond the lakes.
We can’t avoid impacts, but we can try to minimize them.
Every act of living our lives gives us a chance for making improvements, for making changes. There’s so much about this world we don’t know and never will. But what I do know is that it is a worthy goal to make the most of it, to share the most of it, and to somehow find a way to leave it better.
—Patty Dreier, Author, Empowered: One Planet at a Time, a book for activists on environmental and social issues