FALLEN BUCK

18 OCTOBER. Walking up the autumn brook, I come upon a dead buck, a white-tailed deer lying on the mixed leaf-strewn and open mud of the bank. My eyes have been so intent on the water, and he is so well camouflaged—and so still in death—that as large as he is I nearly step on him before I see him. I have come close at times to living deer and have found several dead ones, in advanced decay or little more than bits of fur and bones; but I have never seen such a vision as this. Handsome in death, fallen somehow in his prime, he lies in a lifelike pose. His fur flows over his body with the grace of water flowing over stones in the nearby brook. His large ears—so large—which in life could

pick up the slightest whispers of distant sound, do not hear the rushing of the water just beyond his muzzle. He would make a perfect statue of a deer in gentle stride if I were to right him. His hindquarters have been eaten at slightly ... there is some fresh blood and small scatterings of hair. I take this as the work of scavengers and not what brought him down. Even with these signs of inevitable dissolution at his flanks he is so fresh and appears dignified in death.

As I admire his form and attempt to commit it to memory—the sweep of gray, silvered, light fawn fur over his wonderful rib cage—his sides seem about to heave with breath. His large, wild shape and substance, in which a heart so wildly beat not long ago, still speak of life.

I circle around him, looking from every angle, and each view describes a perfection of form and function. I see how the antlers he soon would have shed are securely set in his head, their footings reminiscent of a tree's rootedness in the earth. His antlers branch forth with a treelike twisting. Taking the antlers in my hands—I never would have expected to have such a tangible hold on a deer, such a physical bond—I rock them and discover a surprising flexibility. I raise his head and part of his muscular neck, lighter and more supple than I would have thought. It seems his eyes are about to blink, his nostrils twitch and snort. As I shift his head about, I feel as though I could raise him entire, lift him to his feet, and set him to run wild again ... as though I could even run wild with him, leap the brook with a single bound and run like a deer through the woods.

I gently lower his head and neck and settle them precisely back in the impression they have left in the semifrozen, leaf-lined brook-side turf, the shallow cradling depression where cheek and jaw rested (did the last of his animal warmth help shape it?) and walk on up the stream.