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4 | (continued) I sensed his discomfort over the prospect of watching a man twenty years his senior survive an “ordeal” which he himself had never attempted, but in all honesty, my enthusiasm for wintering-over was not as firm as he seemed to think. I had never declared anything to him beyond my belief (still perfectly valid) that the monotony would have been more uncomfortable than the temperature. When I was finally evicted on the first of February, I had stayed there long enough to experience real winter camping (something I had always wanted to do), and I was undeniably relieved at the thought that I would not have to endure, alone, the unvarying cold and accumulating snow for another two or three months.
As for the deer, during all the time I was there, I saw only five of them, including the three mentioned above, and the fawn I almost stepped on. But I swear I must have heard ten times that many, often far into the night. Wherever I’ve camped, one of the first things I’ve done, sometimes even before setting up the tent, is rig a long line, well overhead, through the nearest trees, just for a place to put my gear, other than on the ground. It serves to hold laundry, food, sleeping bags, garbage, tools, whatever might attract animals or is in my way at the moment. And once the line is up, I leave it there until I depart. It happened that at the second location, deeper in the woods, my tent was hard against a sapling whose small branches extended partly over the tent. And of course I had done a wrap of the line around that tree, before running it off to as many others as it would reach. It’s 43 ft. long, somewhat worn but quite serviceable. I found it in the garbage bin of a marina, discarded by a (probably) cautious yachtsman. Late one night, after a rain, that line received a sudden tug, sharp enough to shake the little tree and send a shower of drops down onto the tent. Judging from the impact, it could only have been the horns of a buck, cavorting through the open spaces among the ancient maples around the tent. I heard nothing further from him, and never saw him, so I suppose he was all right, but it did upset me that my humble line could cause so beautiful a creature to break his neck just chasing a doe. The line was pale gray nylon (white, originally), and I assumed they could see it, if they could see to run at all, without a moon. But perhaps I was wrong. Certainly, they wouldn’t have been expecting it. The best sighting of all happened on a sunny afternoon in early fall, when I came out of the tent and saw a movement across the woods, along the fenceline beside the field. It was a lone doe, less than 100 yards away, making her careful way north, towards the corner of the woods nearest the houses. What she was after, or where she intended to go from there, I can’t imagine. She never noticed me as I closed the tent and quietly headed directly towards her until I reached the lane, then turned north, paralleling her at a safe distance, never taking my eyes off of her—in all that time, she was the only mature deer I ever saw inside those woods. As the two of us advanced north along our separate paths, she never gave a sign that she had seen me. And I became conscious in myself of a sudden but deep craving to follow her wherever she went. I know enough about the human past that this desire did not surprise me, in principle. But what brought a glow of amazement was its immediate intensity, and the readiness with which all other thoughts fell away in my mind. I have never hunted and never thought I would enjoy hunting. I know better now. A man’s desire to pursue an elusive, statuesque creature far fleeter than himself, yet nearly his size, is not a cultural acquisition—it is not learned—it is instinctive, built-in, of immense antiquity. I suppose it can be sublimated—I’ve often spoken of “hunting” the perfect photograph—but I do believe now that an outright abstention from the real thing can only cause a man to feel a rising sense of emasculation and a terminal erosion of pride. |
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