A slender moon waxing to first quarter waits for the chasing sun to steel it’s glory as I scan the woods with adjusting eyes. The west provides the most likely approach and so receives my attention. As the sun flirts with the horizon behind me, extending the reach of my eye ahead, heavy soft clouds slowly take back all that dawn granted until I am enveloped. Turning back to the east, neither sun nor moon remain. Forty yards out, a silent, shadowy figure slips through the thick air. Coyote, perhaps? Deer? Whoever passes by, the stillness surely robbed her of my scent just as the cloud denied me her identity, and she fades away both unaware and unknown.
When the woods are unseen, every sound is richer. A distant great horned owl keeps me company with a series of morning hoots while squirrels keep me vigilant, asking time and again “Are you a deer?” Slowly the cloud thinned, and woods return. Pileated woodpeckers laugh and rap, and somewhere in the distance the crack of a hunter’s rifle signals success for another who chooses shopping for venison rather than sales on this black Friday. I wonder if shoppers in the mall find as much satisfaction there, amid domestic chaos and competition for excess, as I find here bathed in wild minimalism.
After four hours of sitting silently, sipping my tea, the need to slip back to earth arises and I climb from my perch with as little disruption as I am able. Carefully, I ease eastward along the old fence. A bent No Trespassing sign warns others against joining me on this side. Across man’s imagined boundary, a series of young trees suffer the aggression of a young buck, their bark and cambium stripped away, yellow sapwood abraded and raw.
Reaching the edge of the woods, I find the shell of a box turtle resting in the grass, belly up, abdominal scutes still plated and attached to the shell, and I wonder how he ended up this way. Was this upending the cause of his demise?
Climbing the dam, I crouch low, aware that deer often bed in the tall grass east of the shallow, spring-fed pond. A kingfisher chatters loudly. There are no deer to be seen when I crest, only the kingfisher lighting atop a stump in the mostly dry pond bed. Seeing me, she flies in two great swoops to a tree on the far bank. I sit in the grass and watch until she decides to cross the farm to another hunting ground.
Circling the pond, I come across another line of buck rubs, these ones on larger trees and higher on the trunks. Two years ago, I saw four large bucks bedded here. Perhaps one of them is still visiting. The old coyote den shows fresh evidence of excavation after two years of dormancy. Perhaps the figure I saw in the woods this morning lives here?
I circumnavigate the pond to find three killdeer standing motionless in the late morning sun, and I stop to take a couple photos. They are too far for the shots I would like given the small lens with which I am equipped, but they don’t mind my presence and I sit with them for a few minutes before completing the loop back to my stand.
Lunch is now beckoning, so I walk to the truck. Following lunch, a full belly calls for a nap.
Rested, I return to my stand with a couple hours of light remaining. I carefully scan 360 degrees, then arrange camera, tea and phone on the bench beside me. A friend has joined me this evening in a tree 130 years behind me and I send him a quick text to ensure he knows the rules—either sex is allowed. I turn the ringer off and place my phone face down next to the camera and scan to the west. Yellows and oranges seem to have faded to browns over the past week, but the reds, deep and rich, are brought to life by the low sun—my kind of holiday decorations!
As I turn back to the south, the sun finds a pathway through the trees catching my glasses and reflecting harsh spots on four does standing fifty yards in front of me. With neither snort nor stomp, they jump and scatter. Four tails disappearing with four single bounds, and in seconds the woods are quiet. Oh, well. I remove my reading glasses and set them with the phone beside me.
Time passes quickly watching a setting sun through autumn woods and, with it, my shopping trip is over and Black Friday fades to darkness.
