What We See

Our monkey minds like repetition and the familiar. Those aspects are almost opposites in many ways- repetition being a form of learning, while the familiar stagnates the mind, allowing little nuance for evolutionary thought. It does not seem to be nature’s way in holding things the same for too long. Diversity and constant adaptation run a muck in what we as mere humans see as one easy to take a glance at landscape. This field pictured above, the bramble and overgrowth might make it hard for some to identify as field, there are trees around, but a white electrical tape on the fence line creates transition between field and grove beyond. A withered brown pile of bracken fern collapses in the background. Because I know the species, I can see the delineations, even without man-made cues. But what I can’t pick out so easily are the changes happening. The soil and what’s growing on within it cannot be perceived from this perspective. Time of day is hard to put down, other than recognizing it is not first light or dusk. There were some birds calling and flitting around, which are not easy to find in this image. While you are looking for birds, did you find the deer? She just moved into some cover, but she’s close, and her black tail is highlighted.

I only saw her on my drive because she had been standing in the field just moments before I took this picture. I’d stopped to take photos of her when I first saw her as I drove by. The deer feel sight on them, and will find relief from a predator stare by ghosting into thick brush and shadow to avoid a direct sight-line. Deer are great at standing still, it’s really the best way to avoid being seen. She was positioned as narrowly to the road as she could be while grazing, and stopped to hold a pose when I slowed to take photos.

Her body slowly shifted left towards the brush to get away. Why did she not just run away? Because I had not chased towards her. If she had bolted, I might have given chase. Most predators want to catch something, run it down. We’re taught not to run from predators, but to face them and project size and might. Deer don’t want any confrontation, and try to quietly disappear. Those long stilted legs will still carry them swiftly if they do need to run, but thick brush won’t allow much dexterity for fast movement.

The dynamic connections passing across place through time are crucial to understanding the connectiveness of all things. What we see in a gimps of that living structure, is only the tip of so much complexity thriving and reliant together in community. The blackberry needs sunlight, so it takes over ungrazed or mowed pasture. Grasses and forbs feed several species, one of which is present in the doe that browses through. She is keeping a cleared hoof-path through the open-ground, with side trips to cover and a knowledge of maneuvering through the underbrush. Deer can duck down- even crawl on their knees to get through tight forest spaces. Other hedge edge neighbors include raccoons, opossum, and rabbit. Most of those smaller furies are out at night, a perspective even less of us spend much time observing.

Nocturnal observing is not our strength. As daylight treetop dwellers, our ancestors stayed off the ground and away from predators, who usually hunted in the cloak of night. Today, tools like headlamps and guns make us feel less vulnerable in the dark, but our senses are altered, and perceive places much differently than during the day. Even with the headlamps of my truck pointed at him, this mature buck blurs in my camera’s attempt at capturing movement at dusk. Our eyes can still make out an animal form, and might even clue in to the antlers and general shape of a buck, but without crisp outlines, out minds throw into question what we perceive.

These images are at close range, looking at a focused part of a much bigger whole. Most of the time, our procesing works best with a single frame, or a set of consecutive images of familiar style. Movies are best with plots lines and characters we feel something towards. Nature has been treated like the other for so long now, she’s usually just background noise to what we want to focus on. We look for the deer at dusk on the road, but it’s really the road we’re following. The convenience of travel, pavement and cars, give us such advantage, but it’s been a real tragic saga for most deer populations across this country and the world. Rather than holding that thought and questioning automotive centric living, we push the deer into a ditch and keep driving.

We look at the road and see the deer in our peripheral, then it’s gone, fading into the tall grass and overgrown bramble, into the backdrop of our important lives. As a hunter, I see the deer as a crucial part of my survival, as a winter food source I can count on each year. When I see deer, I look at them when I can. Checking their health, looking for mange, ribs, or a thick healthy neck in fall. These deer I’ve shared in photos today are my home animals, the deer that live around my own home, and share the land with me. They are still numerous and healthy, but if that balance starts shifting, I know to pay closer attention to greater goings on in my neighborhood.

The plants already tell me the water table is dropping. Our creek flooding in winter remains lower each year. Their will be record breaking storms to come, but the rhythm of familiar is unraveling. This is what we can all take more time to see and adapt with. Humanities’ best work happens in times of great adversity. I am watching the fires in Los Angeles in January, 2025. It could be here next, we’re only one drought summer away from total devastation, but the waters are still around, for now. Because the deer have survived our devastation, and still roam through the fields and along our roads without fear. We too must adapt and make changes to stay alive, sometimes crossing a road and not getting hit, risking to gain. This is nature’s lesson of finality.