Impressions from the Forest: A Surprise

A deer.

One fine day I walked along a gravel road up the castle hill in the vicinity of my humble abode. The steep ascent really takes energy out of me, and I do not have an ounce to spare. I have inherited low blood pressure and I take tranquilizers. Both make ascents difficult. But I plod on since it is only about 300 feet of elevation gain (100 m). And so, I proceeded with difficulty until almost at the top I heard a noise in the bushes quite close to me. I stopped in terror thinking: ‘Is it a bear?’ There are a lot of bears in Slovenia, but I really doubted there would be one so close to a town. The territory is way too populated to be able to host a bear, that is how I tried to console myself. So somehow, I took some more cautious steps ahead. Luckily, I was slow, otherwise the deer that came running from the bushes on the left side of the gravel road would have run me over.

I stopped, gasped in awe and tried to seize the moment. The deer took no notice of me. Maybe it did not notice me for I was standing about 20 yards away from it (ca. 20 m). Or maybe it noticed me and tried to get away from me as quickly as possible. The deer ran swiftly over the gravel road and to the other side of it only to be able to speed up along a meadow and finally vanish from my view into a forest.

I had no time to relish the moment of just having seen a beautiful brown deer, when I heard the same kind of noise in the same bushes. Before I was going to be all excited about the possibility of a bear again, I could distinguish another deer going the same way. It ran from one side of the gravel road to the other like programmed on a computer. No hesitation, no pondering about, no stopping. At that point I was calm already. No bears to consider.

I took a step forward only to stop again, for there was another noise in the bushes. One would think only the Santa’s reindeer would surprise us more, but no: there was another common deer running across the gravel road, mimicking the first two to absolute perfection.

Third time really proves to be a charm, for I waited a couple of minutes after the three deer, but there was no more commotion.

Take care,

Helena Smole, author of:

– a fantasy novel with romance Vivvy and Izzy the Dwarf: A series about relationships

– Balancing the Beast, a book offering a bright view of schizoaffective disorder ˗ bipolar or manic-depressive type