Deer

(Snatched this write-up from Facebook, written by my son, Aneesh Chatterjee, some 10 years back, when he was in High School. He is too embarrassed to share this now, so I have hijacked the article. Only because this reinstated the sense of nothingness in me, and feel you should feel it too. Some articles don’t need a photo. You’ll know why)

Just past 1:00 PM. Our final lunch period had ended. Everyone headed to their classrooms. Well – almost everyone. Some people went home, some went to the library. My initial plan was to go down there, too. Maybe watch the latest TFS Abridged episode on the school computers meant for academic research. They really shouldn’t have computers with internet access at school.

But plans changed. I was sitting outside, at our school’s football field. Empty bleachers, sprinklers dancing, and me trying to fly the paper plane I folded out of a very important certificate of appreciation. It wasn’t flying as well as I thought it would. It ended up in the trash can, in several long, muddy strips. With my shoe prints on them. It was a beautiful day to crush the living shit out of a “certificate of appreciation”. And an even better day to skip class.

I looked past the field. There was, behind the school, a wooded area with a walking trail. Windy Hollow Park, the signboard said. I considered going there, but I didn’t want to lug my backpack full of books down the trail. And so, after careful reasoning, I left it on the bleachers, free for anyone to take and destroy. It was freedom.

I’d been down the trail before, but not for this long. It winded down a steep curve – a fenced-off canal tumbled shallow water from one dirty stream to another along the slope – and I found myself walking into a long, empty path shrouded on both sides by thickets of trees.

It was… quiet. Very quiet. I walked slowly – my footsteps sounded blasphemous. The dead leaves cracked with the wind every now and then, but it was quiet. The trail seemed to go on forever. I thought of walking too far, and not making it back to school in time. But I had an hour left before the final bell, and the vacant emptiness of the forest was alluring. Of course, I thought as I walked, it wasn’t an actual forest. Foray into the trees for a while, and you’d hit a road, or a line of houses – something. This wasn’t the wilderness. This was a pale imitation of it, shrouded in a suburban human city. It was the best one could hope for when it came to freedom, though. All you’d need would be a little imagination.

The forest on both sides curved down and up in steep waves, the trees – both standing and fallen – criss-crossing the landscape. I was far away enough from the school that I wouldn’t be able to hear the bell. God, it was quiet. It was addicting. The trees grew larger, thicker, taller – the tallest one towered at a height slightly shy of a residential building. I wondered what it would be like to climb it, climb all the way up, miss my footing, fall in slow-motion, have my life flash before my eyes and hit the ground on my back with a dull finality.

Imagination takes responsibility.

I came up to a point where the path had taken a forked turn, but stopped. It continued on in the same direction, but I stood there at the unfinished turn. The forest slope started almost immediately after it, running down, deep down, where thick trees grew tall, dry leaves carpeted the grass and canopies of branches impeded descent. I wondered what it would be like to find a person lying in the leaves, slowly bleeding to death from the stab wound of a vengeful murderer. Again – responsibility. I laughed. It was stupid to expect anything exciting in a place like this. Hell, I could see the outline of houses right at the end of the upward slope on the other side. Civilization was standing there, hidden, laughing at my naivety. There was no adventure to be found here. No surprises, no shocks. It was only… picturesque beauty. That was it.

Well, I wasn’t falling for it. I forced myself to be happy with this illusion. And then, in that stunning quiet, from the thicket of trees before me, I heard the unmistakable snap of a twig.

At first, I suspected people. But no. There weren’t any voices. I walked toward the edge. I peered through the branches and leaves at the other side of the curve, and there, descending downward slowly, were the distinct impressions of four thin, gray legs, and a swishing white tail.

I did freeze for a while. My wild fantasies led me to think it was a mountain lion. A mountain lion, roaming the government-planted trees beside a walking trail behind a row of houses. For fuck’s sake.

No. I knew what it was. I could see it climbing further down. I stepped onto the leaves, foraged my way through some of the shrubbery without getting any spiky branches to poke my eye out. I saw it there, standing. I could see its head. A deer.

Well, it was a doe, really. I wanted to get closer. I made a soft hissing noise, not wanting to disturb the quiet. When she didn’t respond, I hissed louder.

She turned her head and, from what it seemed, looked me straight in the eye from a distance of perhaps twenty meters. We were locked like that for a short while. She found me uninteresting and looked away, but stood there. I climbed down the slope. I don’t know – I wanted to get closer. Have a better look. See what she would do if I did get close enough.

She kept standing there. Looked to her right – I followed – and I saw another white tail. A second doe. I assumed she was waiting for her friend. They both walked further into the trees. I hissed after them like an idiot, hoping to get their attention – to lock eyes with one of them – but they scampered away. No, not this time. I wasn’t going to let this go. The only close thing to an adventure I find in this god damned boring place, and it scampers away?

Have to say, the forest was hard to walk through. Too many branches, too many blocks, fallen tree trunks, loud twigs. I had them in sight, though. At one point, I saw three. Four. Four of them. Friends? Family? The one I was following had definitely seen me. I froze, not advancing. She looked at me and continued grazing, uninterested, not the least bit afraid. She was thinner than the others. Her fur was ripped. Malnourished? Got into a fight? Do deer get into fights?

It looked mesmerizing. The moment I thought that, I heard Louis C.K.’s famous comedy routine in my head: “Deer are horrible, they shit everywhere, they – they make a noise, you know that? They go AAAANGGGGG – THEY’RE ASSHOLES.”

Laughing out loud in the middle of a forest by myself.

I followed them into a clearing. I was close to the one, but she didn’t seem afraid. But it seemed that, every time I’d get to a certain distance, she’d calmly walk just a little bit further away. Maintaining the buffer zone between us. I kept following them past the clearing, and I realized what I was doing. This wasn’t going to end. She wouldn’t let me get any closer. She’d established a rule. They weren’t running away from me – clearly, all of them knew I was there – but they weren’t going to let me come too close. There was an underlying wisdom in that that made me wonder. They knew I wasn’t a threat, but they knew I could be. They let me be curious by not running away, but kept me at bay with their gentle strictness. I gave up. I’d seen what I wanted to see.

Once I found my way back to the trail, I saw that it ended at another row of houses. I saw other people walking now. Civilization had spilled into this temporary paradise. I heard a school bell – not mine, the elementary school at the beginning of the trail – and heard the steady rise of clamorous children spilling into their own field. It was loud in the forest. The illusion had broken. I looked at the branches, seeing shapes, realizing they were only fallen trees, and moving onward back to the world I came from. People were on the trail now, children were playing beside it, and I could see the distant apartment buildings.

I kept looking to my right, but I didn’t see any of them. They’d vanished when I’d left them in that clearing, when I chose to stop following them. They were invisible now. You don’t hear about deer walking into the city. I’d seen one once, but that was only once. An exception, a long time ago. But this… this was in their habitat. And they didn’t run away. They didn’t feel threatened. They let me see.

I walked back into school, into the library, sat in front of a computer and opened up Facebook. Scrolled through my news feed. Tube lights, computers humming, tables, chairs, students and teachers going about their daily duties – all so vacant. But I was happy.

I won’t regret skipping class. Because for one day, I saw something I’m probably never going to see again. Who knows, I might have learned something too. I definitely learned more in those woods than in that damn school building today. What happened was that I decided to take a walk, I decided to leave my backpack unprotected and leave the school grounds, and I met a group of animals that, with their calm wisdom, showed me something I never thought I’d see.

They showed me that even in this illusion of freedom constructed by humans, nature held authority. Nature wielded silent rebellion.

Aneesh Chatterjee | 2013-14

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