The pause that refreshes

Today as I was coming back from the post office I decided to take a ride up a street I'd never been up before. I do that every now and then, turn up (or down) a street I've never experienced before, just to see what's on it and where it goes.

The street I was on was Cony Street, on the other side of the river in Augusta. I live in Gardiner, but there is no Saturday mail pickup at the Gardiner P.O., so if I want something to go out before Monday afternoon, I have to make the 20-minute drive to the Augusta P.O. Anyway, it wasn't long before I was driving through a woody area, with only the very occasional house. This frequently happens, whether you follow a street in Augusta, or in its little bedroom communities of Hallowell, Farmingdale, or Gardiner: in no time at all you hit "country." I drove 'til Cony Street ended at Cony Road, then turned around in the parking lot of a dancing school surrounded by woods, and headed back the way I'd come. And suddenly a deer stepped daintily out into the road ahead of me and trotted into the woods on the other side of the road. I immediately slowed to a stand-still, delighted. What is it about suddenly seeing wild deer that enchants us? We're driving along, pretty much oblivious, and suddenly there they are, as if by magic, these beautiful, elegant, peaceful creatures. We are being handed a treat, out of the blue.

I sat there for a moment (no traffic), hoping to see some more, for there is never just one deer, there are always three or four or more. But either they'd already crossed, or were hanging back in the woods on the right side of the road, waiting for me to pass. And in my rearview mirror here came two more cars, so I drove on. But my day was made, by this not-too-close encounter (like when your car going 60 miles an hour on a dark road suddenly hits a deer) with one of God's loveliest creatures.

When I first moved to the Augusta area, and lived in a cabin out on Lake Cobbosseecontee, there would occasionally be a few deer foraging in the field that lay beside the gravel road that wound in from the paved country road. Usually they would freeze as my car passed, ready to take off at the slightest suggestion that I and my automobile were a threat. Likewise when I lived in Colorado, and would occasionally take the back roads rather than oh-so-stressful I-25 on my daily commute between Denver, where I was working, and Colorado Springs, where I was living with my sister: sometimes I would round a bend, and there would be a family of deer, serenely crossing the road. Practically no traffic on those back roads, so the animals were accustomed to being able to cross unaccosted. I would always just sit and gaze happily at them, as they made their way into a field.

Seeing wild deer in this way almost makes you feel that God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.