How to walk like a deer

2022-01-12

Dear reader,

There’s a saying that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.

It’s a sarcastic bit of wisdom—a fool with no north star will end up dead, lost, or worse.

It’s a good point, but I’ll also argue the counter.

If you don’t know where you’re going, following a deer trail through the wilderness is a good bet. 

I did so one morning last week with no aim in mind, and I found a lot.

***

The running and jumping ability of the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus Bambicus), not to mention the grace, is on another level than yours and mine.

But by luck, a deer path fits the human body well. If you’re looking for a way to get around the steep hills and ravines of New England, the feasibility of the deer path matches the capability of the human body.

I noticed this when I was a kid.

A long walk through my family’s woods lot would often bring me, on a Saturday afternoon, to the top lip of a steep ravine. My thirsty eyes would turn to the bottom of the ravine where the Hudson River flowed.

The Hudson River is down below the terrace at the far end of the farthest hayfield.

The deer had worn the grass down to a neat dirt track just inside the top lip of that ravine. Finding their way between washouts of the clay soil, their hooves had found a tongue of intact riverbank to bring them down for a drink.

Here in Halifax last week, I was at the reverse end of this view.

I had gone for a walk to explore the banks of the Green River downstream of our house. I was curious to find and bear witness to the exact point the old “Warren’s mill” in what used to be called Reid Hollow diverted its water from the river.

Before I found that, though, I had found a second mill upstream that I had not been aware of. It had its own draw off the river. (This river is something, to power two mills within a stone’s throw of each other. Enough water to go around.)

All this took me to a spot I’d never come to, a spot where I wondered which of the rocks tumbling down into the river was the southeastern corner of my land. It’s a spot almost underneath a steel-and-concrete bridge where Chase Hill Brook meets the Green River.

The bank to my right appears as a scar in the landscape. The bank collapsed into the floodwaters of Tropical Storm Irene. It’s a cliff face of loose gravel topped by the collapsing stumps and roots of the forest floor.

I’ve walked to where I’m standing by hop-skipping some boulders under the bridge. The bank downriver is inaccessible. The bank up Chase Hill Brook is steep and rocky. It makes sense that this is the only boundary corner whose exact spot I’ve never visited.

But the deer do. This is a spot that they come to relieve that pressure on their colons and hydrate. They do so on a thin tongue of intact forest floor that somehow hasn’t been eroded by either body of water.

I followed the deer.

A deer could run straight up any of the steep ravines that rise up from this spot on the long edge of a southward curve in the river. The Green River gurgles downstream to the east here for a reach, but then slams directly into the massive slab of bedrock that makes up what I call Sunrise Ridge.

There are no gentle transitions out of this valley. Yet I wager a white-tailed deer could run flat-out straight up any of them, and outpace any coyote behind it.

Yet they don’t walk just anywhere. When they choose a path, it’s the most gentle, even path across the top of the riverbank. When they climb a steep ravine, they find the most gentle possible grade to traverse it smoothly.

Follow the deer’s path and you find yourself gaining elevation rapidly, yet maintaining your footing across very steep and uneven terrain. And you find yourself doing so with an even effort.

It’s a good match for the human body.

And that speaks to my underlying intention. In walking like a deer last week, I wanted to walk like a human of a different time. Who lived on this land before Halifax became inhabited by descendants of northern Europeans around the mid-1700s?

A propos of European culture, American and western culture at a global level feature a remarkable level of dissociation. Dissociation with our bodies and our emotions, with our families.

A disconnection to place, to food, to medicine to healing as inherent properties of our body and of nature.

Disconnection to the arts, music, dance and performance as human universals, not limited to the select few the market picks for “talent.” 

All available evidence from present-day indigenous cultures, and pre-European-contact ones, tells us that we are the aberrant ones. And I say that with love, because this is the culture I was raised in, that I try to inhabit while also feeling wellness.

Study other tribes, other cultures, in other times and places, including our own place at times in the past. You’ll find so many different ways of connecting and finding wisdom, you’ll be shocked.

I’m not saying these cultures were made of angels only. The very idea that any organization of humans should be “perfect” goes against our very biology. It’s another western frame that leads us to hate ourselves. 

It has been one of my longest guiding intentions in life, as a father, and as a writer to undo that damage. 

And some days, that leads me to follow deer trails.

If boys and men like me trace deer trails today, I imagine they and their families would have a thousand years ago, and probably much more often. Running our main roads along flood-prone river valleys is a pretty modern thing.

How did they get around this area, from Sunrise Ridge to our place, and on to the scout trail to Albany? What did they see, touch, and hear, as they walked? What would they have carried? What would they have set down?

One way to talk to the Abenaki of a thousand years ago, is to talk with their descendants, and I recommend doing so. (See Atowi as one resource on this I support).

Another way is to follow their trail. To put your body in their position.

Yesterday, I wrote in depth about learned helplessness, and its cure. The study of learned helplessness has shown that even the most basic survival capabilities can be shocked out of dogs, rats, humans, and other animals. It may be trauma in life that shocks us, or it may be a cruel lab experiment.

But researchers found a cure to reanimate a lost physical capability such as breathing or running to safety. That was to physically move the bodies of these animals in a way that gave them sensations of doing the lost skill. Even if they had to drag a dog by the leash through the motions.

I am pursuing a hunch that there is a useful connection to be made in putting our bodies in the positions of humans who are different from ourselves by having traits or skills we want to develop. I’ll report my findings in this space.

***

As a writer I love drawing parallels between what's going on under my feet and what’s going on out in the world. To draw significance in what I see in nature, and to tell stories.

I’m going to resist doing that any further today.

This is nothing more than the story of a brief walk to put myself in someone else’s shoes.

Anytime I see a human doing that, it is enough.

On that, I would like to appreciate my colleague Earl Holtz, who departed our Earthly plane the night of December 31st.

We’ve had some turnover among Town of Halifax staff. Earl is retired from a career in management at Pitney-Bowes, and he related to me some of his wisdom.

“In my position you’d get executive training,” he explained to me. “I was put in a class at one point about how to deal with difficult people on the job. And I realized that I sounded a lot like the difficult people they were describing.”

Earl told me he resolved at that point to hear difficult feedback, to look at what he could do to take responsibility for conflict, and to grow.

From working with him for a few short months, I can only say I can’t imagine how bad he was before!

Just kidding—he was fantastic to work with and truly seemed to have grown as a man. The joke is one I made to him at our last meeting and that he laughed at, so I feel right in using it here even though it may be too soon to laugh about losing such a good neighbor.

I hope Earl’s enjoying the wilds in heaven, and I hope you’re enjoying them here on Earth.

In peace,

Tristan

Quill Nook Farm