Growth & Nature: The Life Cycle of A Deer

All life ebbs and flows in a steady rhythm. Be it deer or man, we as parts of nature grow and grow.

Fawn

Fawns are one of the most beautiful sights nature has to offer: speckled in white, small and wonderful, adorned with silky hair. Fawns are perfectly pure: rid of scent, rid of want, rid of worry. They camouflage miraculously into nature and follow mother-side. Fawns are playful and precious: arriving in batches of one-three per season. Their coats are perfectly rusty but bonny and their eyes wide and full of life.

We are all once newborn: white-tailed, small, and gentle. We are miracles of the universe thrown into a world of wonder and will. We start so sweet and innocent, but the world is never the same to us. We as little fawns wander blissfully through the dappled woods, unaware of gunshots and snares hidden along our way. We as little fawns wander into the warmth of our mothers and hide away from the rest, nestled deep into this sense of comfort.

Our little white spots are our proof of existence — we exist as the apples of our parents' eyes, the four-leaf clovers of our little grove, the baby of the family. We are small and tan and lost in single moments: the cry of birth amidst the sterile white buzz; the rocking to sleep cradled by the sweet songs sung to lull us to sleep; the whispers and affection that wafts into our ears. But are we meant to stay so perfect and sweet? So flawless? We are not spotless; are we meant to flaw or flower?

Spring blends to Summer, and soon Autumn leaves bleed into Winter’s cold. We live so aimlessly for a year that is passed in the skitter of our legs and the ruffle of the breeze.

Yearling

Yearlings are deers aged 14-18 months. They still remain mother-side but begin to tempt the boundaries of their independence. After two years, they shall embark on an independent life. Yearlings lean into their agility and birth-right to glide through forests at up to 30 miles per hour. Yearlings lose their camouflage and unmarred scent, but begin to define themselves as a part of their own family.

A yearling is further into one’s life than a year sometimes. Yearling is not the marker of a year, rather the marking of innocence fading. We keep our white tails but we lose our white spots. We are larger now, our weight held more tightly by the world. We are more spread out but also more untamed. If we see a road, shall we run across? Or now do we know the dangers littered along every path?

We are now straying from the role of our mother’s attachment or our father’s pride; we now move freely and dangerously too. We will wander into the wrong side of the woods sometimes, so close to being ensnared: the memories we carry like bricks on our back; the trauma we frolic through meadow by meadow; the footprints we foolishly leave in the mud for strangers to follow us home.

Our tails lose their color: fade from white to tan, fade from light to dark. Our worlds begin to spin a different way and we suddenly wander with a deeper ambition.

Doe

Does search for food at dusk and dawn, relying on their enhanced and advanced sight and hearing. Deers are adept at swimming and often move through various locations, seasons, and periods of life via river/stream. Does give birth to fawns in Autumn and are expected to do so in order to keep a family line of deer from going extinct. Sometimes, the does will join a herd of deers and walk in groups. Does can grow to be social animals.

We may reach a point where we begin to lose some of our elders and carry newfound responsibilities on our back. We are “of-age,” we are meant to be something and we feel helpless to fight it. The world around us is livid with expected roles. Are we meant to succumb to something so fixed? Are we meant to surrender so easily, head bruised and bent down?

We try to move as we please, though. This is the duty of us does. Nature has a rhythm, a cycle, and we are not slaves to it, rather we choose to be maestros. We may gather many things, from the miracle of life to things as trivial as twigs. Perhaps we find pieces of the world for which we had been searching years ago. The season of harvesting brings forth new hope; we gather droplets of life and try to create something out of the role we were almost forced to undertake. We may even gather those around us and build a life where we may be sociable with peace.

But this too grows frail as the years fade 15 times over, we watch so many dawns and dusks create the murals in which we live. The jolt of harvest of life comes to a flicker, our frayed feet come to a halt.

Afterlife

The only sure thing about death is that we do not know what lies ahead. Brain activity may continue after death which allows speculation of a period of reflection or reminiscence we may undergo before what lies after life. Physical, tangible energy will remain no matter what, often either transforming into thermal energy through cremation or returning to its potential chemical form as we sink back into the Earth. The only intangible part of us that surely lives on is the memory others may carry of us and the impact we may leave on the world.

Perhaps we were meant to leave our mark in the world or perhaps we were meant to accept our own marks or lack thereof. We may wander into a light which leads to a pond: a place to reflect and one day, move on. We will sometimes look back with spite on our misfortunes: the scars we gathered from both the cruelty around us and the hate we carried within us; the vines that snagged our coats and held us away from what mattered; the cackles of society caging us silently in invisible chains. We think back to those we lost along the way and the calls of wolves and bears which reminded us how dear our own lives were. We think back to what we wish we could have saved and what we wish we never faced. But are we what we live through? Are we the weight we collect until we fall down?

We may become fawns one day again. Or perhaps we fall into an infinity of monotony. But we lived and have life within us. We shower our love into the Earth and sprinkle it into the air. We tell stories and write poetry and create art in the fallen leaves and fading footprints. We have memories of miracles, we have journeyed through white spots and tails all the way into a life of harvest and back-breaking. We look back at how we prevail and sink ourselves into this world that perhaps never intended to give nor to take, but we lay down our hands and give the world every part of us as our price for existing.

And so we continue to trickle in and out of this complex arrangement we call life. The uncertainty of ourselves and the seasons for which we grow sure are never perfect, but our lives are ours and infinite. We are fawns. We are yearlings. We are does and bucks. And yes, we are sometimes even dead.

We are an endless cycle of life: of wonder and will. Through trauma and triumph, we are miracles.

And so I wonder: will we cherish ourselves? Us — miracles?

Written collaboratively by Anya and Nat.