I was making rose-hip jam (kind of insane, I thought at one point as I sliced each hip in two and removed the seeds: 4 cups worth…) with the beautiful fruit of the Rosa canina growing up one side of the house —
when I looked out the window over the kitchen sink. This fawn, almost spotless, was sniffing the pile of logs from an alder tree blown down in last weekend’s storm:
This fawn and its mum have been around a lot lately. In fact, I think this is the same mum who brought two very tiny fawns in early summer to browse on the tips of roses growing through the deer-proof fence around the vegetable garden. A little later, there was just one fawn. This one. We have our memory-maps of the woods and mountain near our house — where chanterelles grow (and they were delicious on pizza last night!), where to see the first shoots of death camas and then the ghostly white flowers, the pond where the tree frogs and long-toed salmanders lay eggs in early spring. And I guess the deer (and bears, grouse, elk, bobcats, weasels…) have their memory-maps too. Where a few sweet rose-leaves can be nibbled or a tendril of cucumber vine edging out of its box. Where a crabapple tree is strong enough for a bear to climb at dawn on autumn morning before a woman at a sink sees and comes out with a dishcloth to chase it away.
...Theresa Kishkan 