When the Deer Looked Back

Notes from the Trail

Sep 30

Written By Henry Bond

This week, I went up to the yoga room because I needed some time to sit quietly and think.

After meditating for a while, I heard rustling in the leaves outside and suspected a deer was nearby.

Sure enough, when I stepped outside, a buck was standing beneath the trees.

I moved toward him slowly, trying not to scare him, and when he noticed me, his head shot up.

But when I stopped, he stopped too.

For the next several minutes, we simply stood there looking at each other.

From the Week

At first, I expected him to run.

Instead, he watched me.

So I stayed where I was.

There was no reason to move closer and nothing I particularly needed from the encounter.

For several minutes, we remained almost completely still, each of us aware of the other.

Eventually, the moment ended as quietly as it had begun.

There is something different about being noticed by a wild animal.

Usually, we move through nature as observers.

We look at trees, birds, ocean, mountains, and animals as parts of a landscape passing before us.

But every so often, something looks back.

For a moment, the relationship changes.

You are no longer simply observing the natural world.

You are participating in an encounter with another living intelligence.

Meditation can sharpen this kind of attention.

Not because it makes unusual moments happen, but because it can make us available when they do.

The instinct with the deer was not to approach, explain, photograph immediately, or make something happen.

It was simply to become still.

Sometimes attention works best that way.

We stop reaching toward the moment long enough to let the moment come toward us.

“Stillness can become its own kind of conversation.”