I was having my morning coffee at our Airbnb in Fayetteville where we had come to see our son and his family. I looked up and saw a doe and a young fawn sitting inside the back yard by the chain link fence about 50 feet away. The fawn took a few steps and I knew immediately that the fawn had just been born. The owner had told us that deer were frequently seen in this neighborhood which is situated in a forest.
Yvette and I watched the doe lick her newborn. Then the doe stood up and we noticed maybe a second fawn lying on the ground. It was in a slight depression so we weren't sure. It was not moving and we feared that I had not survived. Then the doe started licking there fawn. After several minutes, we noticed the fawn moving and we exhaled. Then the fawn stood up on very wobbly legs. The mother laid down on her side and both fawns began to nurse.
For the next two hours I barely moved from my seat as I saw the fawns nurse and take their first steps and then walk around a bit along the fence. Several times they would lie down and simply rest. During this time, we could see them walk more steadily, even trying to run though unsuccessfully. Once they wandered a bit too far from their mother, and she walked over and persuaded them to walk back to the birthing place. Whenever she was close to the fawns and they were standing, she would lick the rest of the their bodies. By the time we left, we felt confident that she had licked every square inch of their bodies, some parts many times!
Sometime the mother would stand up turn around and then sit back down. While the fawns were nursing, she would lick their bottoms and their white tails would flicker furiously. I learned from the internet that mama did this to stimulate urinating and defecating. The internet said that the mother would then eat the feces and lick the site where the fawns had urinated to eliminate any smell that might attract predators.
Since this is a blog about mindfulness, I suggest that if this fact repulses you, you might breathe and acknowledge that this is simply a manifestation of a natural process that has borne the test of time. Can you see the wonder in this feature of evolution that increases the chances that this species thrives.
The doe was constantly alert, her ears coming to abrupt attention with each noise or motion. At first, she would go on alert every time we moved or made noises. After a while she became accustomed to our occasional movement or noise-making.
On the other side of the fence was someone else’s back yard. Shortly after we noticed the deer, a man on a riding mower appeared and for the next half hour mowed back and forth. The doe was constantly alert but not spooked. Perhaps she realized that she had made her bed here and short of someone clearly approaching them, she was not going to leave because the fawns could barely walk much less run.
Other than share this wonderful experience, why would I write about this experience in a blog about mindfulness? I am currently reading Finding Our Way Home by Myke Johnson. I am also taking a year-long course on Zoom from Insight Meditation Society called Touching the Earth, with 5 day intensives during each of the four seasons. Both the book and the course emphasize how deepening our relationship with the natural world can also deepen our mindfulness practice. While I have always found refuge in the natural world, regularly walking the Ashuelot River path near my house was a huge part of my recovery from the aortic dissection.
Myke Johnson also writes about how deepening our connection to nature can help us to deal with grief many of us feel about the brokenness of our planet, something that many authors like Terry Tempest Williams and Robin Wall Kimmerer have also written about. Myke noted that the founders of a wilderness awareness school realized that many of the young people in the school hit the 'wall of grief' when they became overwhelmed with sorrow with the awareness of the degradation of the natural world around us. Myke writes of discovering her indigenous ancestry and how their descendants, including her, have become so far removed from the deep connection with nature that her ancestors lived with. She came to realize that "in order to be alive in this world, I need to grieve and...to accept that human beings do not live in harmony with the earth right now...In order to do the work of healing, of reconnection to the earth, I need to have compassion for myself and my people." She found herself wanting to fight against those people who are destroying the earth. She then had the awareness that this "would cut me off, into another brokenness of separation. Just as I must welcome all the parts of myself, I must welcome all the parts of the larger whole. If I am a part of the circle of life, so is everyone else."
At the beginning of the Touching the Earth course, we were encouraged to engage regularly with the natural world around us, to connect with our non-human relatives who share our world, and to cultivate our own personal spiritual home and refuge in the natural world.These are a few of the questions that the teachers suggested we explore:
How do you understand refuge? [I wrote about refuge on October 20, 2020.]
What is nature teaching you about refuge?
How do you understand or experience a reciprocal relationship with nature?
How can ritual support or deepen this exploration?
As you explore nature, what are the qualities of that experience that are refuge for you? Is there quiet joy, relaxation, peace, ease?
Please feel free to share your own experiences of awe with nature and how connection with nature helps you to deal with the despair that comes from seeing the degradation of our environment.