I saw deer today, slow and close.
We don't got a lotta deer here in the Berdoos, enough to see some once or twice a year if'n you're out in the foothills a lot. I'm somewhere in the hills for a least a while nearly 100 days a year. We glimpse them occasionally while driving up dirt road 2N40 on test fly days. Hindquarters disappearing behind a bush on a nearly vertical slope or a pair rounding a corner and bounding aside. I'll see one or two whille hang gliding, but not every year, even. There are so few that I don't know whether to sneer at, laugh at, or pity the groups of deer hunters we see every October. I see more hunters in a month than deer in a year by a factor in the range of 6 to 10.
These deer were different.
I was driving down from the Crestline Glider Launch on the paved road along the ridge through the houses past the church at the 5-way intersection where you do a near-uey to take the shortcut to 138 and bypass Top Town. The deer, doe and fawn, were crossing the intersection from the NE side, having traversed the little hilltop cluster of homes where I lived briefly a dec and a half ago. The mama led the fawn at a stately pace across my bow and even down my target road for a few feet before opting for the skinny wedge of dirt and pine needles that got wider a ways ahead.
Graceful animal, lots of shoulder muscles.
A little bafflled-looking.
That's going around.