Winter

Dear Deer,

When I was a little kid, I read a book about a boy who appeared in the forest one day. He ran like a deer, light and fast. He wore clothes that looked like leather but that were fabric, strong and nearly untearable. He was horrified, stricken, when he realized what people were eating, and wouldn't touch things that came from animals. One day he ran away, back into the woods, in the cold clean air, and he vanished.

When I read it, I didn't understand things. There were other books and films that had similar messages, as if in code, that I didn't decipher for a long time. I know that these stories made an impression on me, though.

Today when I think of freedom, I see the ocean, swelling and breathing; I see the forest, like a warm fur on the hills in winter, cold crisp white snow blanketing the ground; I see animals running and flying and sleeping, untouched by human hands.

It gives me hope to think of you out there, running so quickly, breathing that cold air, moving furtively in the dark spaces under the pines, darting across meadows crisp and dry and waiting for snow.

I think: the world would be better off without us humans, our hard hearts and our cruel hands. Our minds aren't doing you much good, are they? If the earth were cold again, an ice age freezing our cities and pushing us in small and vulnerable numbers to the cooling equator, if we were taken down a notch, maybe that would be enough.

Love,
A