Transcription
Around the Cosmic Campfire by Tony Wright
Chapter Four: The Woman of the Woods
My friend had to take off early in the morning to get back on the road and head out of Nashville to play music. I hadn't seen him in years, but he would check in from time to time to see me out here in the woods at the retreat south of Nashville. He would share some meals, catching up on what he'd learned about his life since we last met, making a really potent interaction for someone reclusive like myself. I was someone who had been living alone in the woods, out in the middle of nowhere, for many, many years. Kerry was about 14 years my junior, and in an earlier segment of our lives, he used to spend time helping me put some of my songs down in the studio for posterity. He was always a spirit partner to me, and he felt precisely on the same track, the same vibration or wavelength that I was on in every different phase of our checking in through the years. It was always powerful to me and left me feeling nourished and spiritually high every time we would commune. It seemed our vibrational radio stations were always tuned to the same higher station at every reconnect.
On this particular morning, I had gotten up early to see him off to his next road gig, and I'd thrown on my daughter's long white robe over my white cotton nightgown. After saying a sweet goodbye, he left, and I sat for a short while in my favorite chair in the living room, listening to meditation music and recapping the wonderful conversations we had during our visit. I was feeling in tune with everything around me. As I sat, I could see out the living room window, and something odd was moving out there. And suddenly, I could hear a ruckus. Something felt very wrong. As I got up and ran so fast to the front door and looked out the screen, in time to see two dogs with something down in the fairy ring.
The fairy ring was a place I created years earlier in the front of the wooded yard, in the form of a big circle of rocks I'd gathered from the forest and then scraped the forest floor clean of weeds and leaves. It was my little version of wanting to be Stonehenge, as I adored the rocks in it. I had planted ferns, and eventually, the forest floor became covered in bright green moss, soft to the bare feet. Someone could do yoga there, have a prayer session, or take a peaceful nap. I always had a hammock hanging between two trees in there, and some lawn chairs were on the side. It was just a special spot I declared had energetic purpose, and I loved to sit out there and relax with friends. At this particular moment in time, I first thought my two dogs had a squirrel or a cat, as I could see a flash of brown without my glasses on and a distance away from the house. But as the scuffle continued, I quickly realized it was a fawn, a very, very tiny fawn.
I didn't even stop to think about being barefoot and in my nightgown and robes. I ran out screaming towards them so loud that I later realized I had almost lost my voice. The old dog willingly slunk away when I got into the fairy ring. In just moments, the old dog looked at me as if she was saying, "It wasn't me; it was Ali's idea. I didn't do it, really." She was now an elder, and even when young, I'd seen her; I'd never seen her really kill anything before. I figured she was telling me the truth. The young dog, Alley dog, was in her dog-mine at that point and was not going to give up the kill. So, in a split second, which was all I had, I took the belt off of the white robe and I wrapped it around her neck and pulled her all the way to the front porch and locked the porch gates to keep her in there. I cursed that she didn't have her choker collar on at that moment. By the time I got back to the fairy ring to see if the very tiny fawn was dead, it was gone. I was breathing so hard; I figured if it was close to being my time to go out of this life, it would probably be now. I was radically hyperventilating, and my heart was in my throat. I looked around for my fairy ring vantage point, only to see this fawn going up the hillside about a hundred long footsteps away from me and on the other side of the top of the driveway. I thought to myself, "She has to be injured with two dogs on her like that," so I set out to pursue her.
I must have looked laughable, tiptoeing through the poison ivy, which was everywhere outside of my fairy ring. I was tiptoeing in my bare feet, holding up my gown and robe with each hand on each hip, trying to be quiet while hyperventilating through the forest towards the fawn. When I got to the other side of the top of the driveway, the fawn was halfway up the hill in the short weeds and bad ivy. She was walking away from me—escaping the dogs was more like it—and I called to her, "Here, baby, come here. Here, baby, come here to me," and I did the kissy noise a few times with my lips. I knelt down, regardless of the weeds, and held my hand out to her and waited for a moment. I had no clue what possessed me to think I could successfully call a fawn; I just wanted her to come to me. I just wanted it. The fawn turned around and saw me and stopped a moment, then walked all the way down the ridge towards me, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I had called her, and she came. She was a wild creature who had probably never seen a human before. She walked to me, and I picked her up in my arms, with my heart going a million miles an hour faster than I had just been going, and I held her to my chest. All I could say was, "Oh, baby, my sweet little baby deer." She was so small; I could hold her like a doll in my arms. She put her head on my shoulder, and we stood there, it seemed for eons. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, please help this baby." That prayer was all I could muster up when I got out of the shock and came to my senses.
I walked gently the short distance with her against my chest to my camp house off the driveway. In there was a futon sofa, and I closed the door behind me and sat on the sofa. I rocked her for a while and hummed to her and told her she was safe. I just softly hummed, almost a low hum—the universal vibration of peace and calm—partly for her and partly for me. I realized I couldn't do that forever, although I would have been happy to, since my passion has always been for deer, even having deer statues in my house. She was not the first deer I had rescued. I decided to put her down on the floor and see if she was moving all right or if she was badly injured. The floor in there was a brown painted concrete, and the room was fixed up for guests and for musicians to come and play music together and hang out. It was a cozy little one-room building that I used to like to just sit in, and I sit there from time to time. It felt good in there—forest green walls and rustic wooden trim and an Amish cook stove to keep a cooking fire burning if I wanted. It was complete with giant checkers on the table and four chairs. It was a good, no electricity available, stone room, storm room if needed. It seemed almost comical to have a tiny deer walking around in there. However, she was moving just fine—no limp—but there were some small spots of blood dripping as she walked, but nothing gushing, nothing torn open, not like Phalene, the much older fawn I had rescued years earlier. Phalene had required stitches. This baby was so small; her little hooves did tiny clicking noises on the cement, and she would look down at her steps, as I'm sure she'd never heard that noise before from just walking on the soft forest floor. She seemed amused and almost inquisitive. She was so small; she looked like a stuffed fawn you might see on a child's bed. I figured she was probably only a day or two old.
I wasn't quite sure what to do. I had to go to the city for a massage therapy client who was coming to see me from out of town. It was too late to cancel, and I didn't want to leave the fawn in the camp house all day. I made a few calls but could not find any wildlife agency who would pick her up, and the phone line, and I knew that was illegal to keep a wild animal, especially an injured one, even as I toyed with the idea anyway. I didn't have a fenced-in area anymore, so that seemed out of the question. I wasn't sure what to do. After speaking with one of my authentic good old country friends, they reminded me that with the fawn that young, the mother was probably already frantically trying to find it and wasn't too far away. "Oh no, oh no," I would have to let her go. I sighed. I thought deeply about what to do and finally realized I had to get her back into the forest for her family to retrieve her. She was moving fine, and her bleeding was minimal—just tiny spots. I put both dogs in the garage for the day and locked them in, then went back to the camp house, picked her up again, sat with her for a while, and she was quite content for me to hold her and rock her, and perhaps she thought I was her mother at that point. I hugged and hugged on her and said goodbye to her and petted her soft head right between her ears. Her ears were like mink fur, and she smelled like the outdoors. I told her I loved her and to be safe and go find her mama. I took her out to the ridge side and put her down on the ground, kissing her face, and she scooted away after a moment of indecision. I think she would have been happy to come with me. I watched her slip away into the daylit forest and could not think of anything else all day long. I wondered if she would be all right. I wondered if she would be rescued by her mother, but then I wonder many things. I could think of nothing else but her all day. I felt like crying. I wanted to hold her again to make sure she was safe.
It was almost dark before I made it back home that day. I put on my muck boots and got the flashlight and headed up the ridge where I'd put the baby. She was nowhere to be seen. I sent strongly my deep knowing that she had been retrieved by her mother. When the weekend came, I called my elder country neighbor, Essie, and told her the story. She told me in her gentle Southern sound, "Well, it's mama probably just got her just fine. Othell he seen a doe with a pretty new fawn coming across the field on Friday, and they was heading up the north ridge." Essie's field was connected to my property on the backside. Essie was not prone to making up stories, and I had a feeling that my baby was fine and journeying on with her dear family. I was elated.
It is funny how things have to line up perfectly sometimes to be able to have a particular experience. I had to have company leaving that day because I never get up that early and had to be sitting in the chair in order to see the events—which is the only chair that I can view the front of the yard. I also had to leap outside that exact instant because in 10 seconds more the fawn would have been killed by my two dogs. And I have to have something on, like my belt of my robe, to restrain the dog. And I had to see the fawn go up the ridge in the weeds, and I had to have wisdom and intuition that I could go to her and get her and be fearless enough and brave enough to bump the crop of poison ivy, and she had to hear me and feel me and trust me in some way to intentionally walk back down the ridge to me. And probably God's stars were all lined up perfectly for any of these to even all happen. I don't know. I had my divine energy all lined up and in tune with everything around me in that moment I investigated the ruckus, and tuning in is certainly the key. Feeling a line to all good things in your world will bring more things good to you. That is what I love about manifesting; that is what I love about learning about the God station. It is an amazing station to tune into. I'm very grateful for all the experience because it certainly is one of the richest experiences with an animal I've ever had out here in the woods.
I cherished that I got to reaffirm what I'd always known: we do communicate with other creatures, that they are listening and watching, and that perhaps they have a knowing we are here to help them any time if we are here to help them. I still find it amazing that I attracted such a stunning moment of something against all odds, like a critter of the wild coming to me when I called it, letting me hold it against my heart and feeling our hearts beating together. It was just one of those outrageous and unforgettable moments in my life. I wonder if the baby was related to my dearest feline fawn from nearly 15 years earlier. I wondered if my feline family down through the years had been coming secretly around the house regularly, if she had been subtly showing off her kids and grandkids to me and telling them about me, the woman of the woods who healed her and fed her for weeks and then let her go years earlier. I wonder now if the newest baby will also tell a story to her young someday, how the woman angel in the long white robe, the woman of the woods, came and picked her up and held her close, let her tap dance for a moment in the woman's world, and then gave her back to her mother. In the deepest stratus of my being, I just sigh and smile—this teary smile mostly. I just live in wonderment. I am continually wondering about so many things we cannot explain, but I do know these things are dances of heaven and earth.