A doe,
a deer,
a female deer.
Ray,
a drop of golden sun...
Wild / Dear / Ness, Site Based Installation, 2022
She leads her family through the trees and watches the road, signaling to them when it is safe to cross. She stares back at me through my car window, gauging my intentions, always on the edge of flight. Mine and Ray’s relationship consists of mutual observation. I have spent months trying to capture a specific doe on Dogwood Road. The first time I saw her was a frigid dawn in January. In the dark of a blue-black sky just beginning to glow around the edges, she looked the same as all the other deer. In the beginning, all the deer looked the same—lithe and graceful, in their grey-brown winter coats. They were also equally elusive. Then, I read that white-tailed deer are matrilineal, meaning that they organize themselves into family groups led by an older, more experienced doe who guides her daughters, sisters, nieces, and youngest sons. Suddenly, I realized that I had been seeing Ray all along. She is the lead deer in the small herd I have been observing. I lived in Southern Illinois as a child. Back then, I was usually barefoot, with dark hair down to my waist, and spent as many of my waking hours as I could looking for forests and adventure. When I was eight, the brushy tangle of so-called junk trees and sticker vines at the end of our lane in the trailer park stood in for my majestic forest. In that sticker patch, I became Sacagawea, leading explorers West with my baby on my back, Mr. Spock, exploring strange new worlds, and characters from whichever book I had checked out from the school library. My best friend, Michael, took turns between being Lewis and Clark, James T. Kirk, and Luke Skywalker. When I was ten, my family moved to a trailer park in Makanda, Illinois, that backed onto a ‘real’ forest. I saw the movie, Bambi that year and immediately checked out the book from my school library. The part where Bambi's mother dies was crushing but felt real. I was fascinated by how the book presented the animals’ thoughts and conversations and how the joy the animals felt in living was punctuated with moments of simple, frozen terror, because I could relate to that in my own life. I already knew that nothing in life was promised and that everything could change in the amount of time it took a leaf to fall from an oak tree. Still, although I began to look for deer constantly, I only saw them rarely, usually when my family visited Giant City State Park. I adored Bambi’s cleverness, kindness, sense of honor, and how much he loved his mother. By that age, my own mother frequently worked late, and I missed her. Some days, I worried that she might not come home at all. In 1980, my teacher at Unity Point school in Carbondale told us that the people of Alaska had voted for the bowhead whale to be their state marine animal, which, living in a landlocked state, I could not even imagine. I remember voting for Illinois’ state mammal and choosing the white-tailed deer, but I don’t remember the other choices. Back to Ray. Scientists are taught not to personify animals, which is an interesting word, given that some animals have been granted personhood. But I am not a scientist and I doubt that Ray cares what I call her. For me, remembering that I am human and being cognizant of how I experience the world, helps me to recognize the differences and similarities between Ray and myself.