Flat, gray rocks snapped under my feet as I walked carefully along the path in order to avoid stepping in a muddy spot or lose my footing. My husband and I spoke quietly to each other, chatting about the wildflowers and lack of people in the park when a commotion in the woods jolted our attention. A white-tailed deer bounded over a branch and stopped in a clearing, staring at us in curiosity from a safe distance.
We stood quietly, observing the creature and whispering to each other.
“It’s so beautiful.”
“Look at the way it turns its ears.”
“Do you see where the antlers are going to grow in?”
“His tail is longer than I’ve ever seen before.”
This wasn’t the first deer we’d encountered since entering Ontario south of Thunder Bay, and they’d been particularly generous in popping up throughout Sleeping Giant Provincial Park. Growing up in Wisconsin, where people routinely took time off of work and school every fall to hunt white-tailed deer, the animals were much more skittish and quick to dash off into the woods at the first scent of a human. Here, the animals hesitated a moment, checked us out just as we observed them, then casually munched on a mouthful of grass before turning and wandering into the woods and out of sight.
