I was recently drinking a beer and driving south on 69 at about 60 miles an hour,
lost as I so often am in bipolar thoughts of how my entire life has always for some reason seemed to be a case of either screaming reckless exhilaration or devastating emptiness,
and locked in the attempt to remember what it felt like to get struck by inspiration and saved at the last minute from yet another episode of days spent high above treeline trying to taunt some lightning out of god and nights whiled away with too much whiskey and a pistol with a predilection for pointing itself in the wrong direction,
when suddenly up from the dusk at my nine o’clock came a deer I’d never met before but had the pleasure of getting to know for a few milliseconds till she killed herself right in front of me on the hood of my car.
Blindsided as much by the violence as by the surprise,
I barely stayed the highway as her body buried itself in the rearview and my mind redlined to wrap itself around a bevy of fresh conditions to process including but not limited to
blood and shit spattered across the windshield,
a temp gauge gone mental,
the mystery of the missing side mirror,
the flashing of wildly unfamiliar dash lights,
about half a can's worth of beer everywhere except for in the can,
and this present darkness now unpenetrated by headlamps.
A mad mile drags by till I can find a safe place to pull off. I get out to investigate. It’s a lot worse than I thought. My car is fucked and no cell reception way out in these parts. I bet I can count the number of people who’ll drive by between now and sunrise on one hand.
So at this point it seems to me as if there's only one sensible option. Only one card left to play, if you will.
Or I guess you could technically call it eleven cards, depending on how you want to look at the situation.
I pull the 12-pack out of the backseat and check the remaining cans for damage. 11/11 beers, would highly recommend. I plop the box down on the ground next to a slowly growing puddle of what I suppose is probably coolant and get right to it. This is my first deer so you'll have to forgive me if I'm doing something wrong here. Hell if I know what the rules are for this sort of situation. But what I do know is I sure didn't move to a Dark Sky Community to sit around inside every night staring at a screen. The stars out here are incredible.
Where was she from?
Where was she headed when fate decided that our paths should cross?
Did she have a family? A significant other perhaps?
What were her hopes and her dreams?
Hell, I didn't even have time to get her name. But I tell you what she was a good deer. A damn fine good deer that's for sure. And she's at peace now. We have to remember that and focus on that above all. No matter that she was taken from us far too young—at least she's at peace.
I'll miss you my dear but I'll never forget you. Godspeed in your journey through whatever's next. Maybe sometime between now and whenever I black out alone on a dirt road in the dark beside a bleeding car, inspiration will strike.
