Writing is Trying
Letting the metaphor nurture me
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Back in October, I wrote about a dead deer I found on a cliff-framed beach on Martha’s Vineyard.
I kept trying to make meaning of its ominous presence. Its mysterious death. Then I remembered something the writer Pam Houston told me:
“The best metaphors are the ones that grow naturally out of the scene or out of the glimmer without me having to go, ‘Okay, what metaphor goes here?’ I like the meaning to float a little.”
I’ve been floating in the deer’s meaning for months now. Then, a few weeks ago, something happened. Something that made me think the metaphor may have been missing its better half all along.
My commute to and from Flagler College takes me along a sort-of-famous stretch of ocean highway. Prime snowbird real estate. Between three-story mansions built on sand, the ocean glimmers and winks. There’s a gas station where you can check the surf while you pump.
Right beside that gas station is the entrance to the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve. I often stop there after class for a hike through the maritime forest. On the trail this time of year, it’s common to find armadillos nosing for grubs at the trail’s edges.
It was the last day of the semester, and the weather was pitch-perfect. Florida winter at her finest. A slight chill. A clear sky. Golden hour radiating through every tendril of Spanish moss.
On a long stretch of the trail by the marshy meadow, I saw them.
The deer.
There were three of them. Does. Fully grown, not a fawn in sight. Together, they crossed the trail toward the meadow.
I’ve been hiking this trail for years. I’ve never once seen a deer, let alone three.
We watched each other awhile, their ears alert. Then off to the meadow they ran.
I tiptoed up the trail, hoping to get closer. Holding my breath as I walked. When I reached the meadow’s edge, though, they were gone.
Or, rather, two of them were gone. But one had hung back, completely still, shielded in the grasses.
What happened next wasn’t an approach. It was more of a circumnavigation. The doe crossed the meadow, and then—for reasons I may never understand—decided to join me on the trail.
She moved toward me slowly, stopping after every few steps with a back hoof raised. Her white tail was wagging—a stubby tuft.
As she passed me, I didn’t breathe. She led the way down the trail, occasionally turning back and sizing me up. I kept some distance. While I hadn’t seen fawns, I knew they could’ve been nearby.
And after a few magical minutes together, my new doe friend pranced away into the woods.
That buck who’d appeared to me on the beach in October had been so mysterious in his lifelessness. Had he drowned? Or had he jumped from the clay cliffs?
This doe on the trail was not only alive. She was brazen. Bold. Alert, but willing to set her skepticism aside.
By approaching me, she’d reached for trust—or, in the very least, curiosity. She’d given me the benefit of the doubt.
Perhaps I’d earned that benefit with my gentle approach. My soft voice. My compassion toward her animal fear.
Or perhaps she’d simply trusted.
The buck’s mystery? Cause of death. The doe’s? Cause of trust.
I’m in an inventorying phase. An arduous process of asking myself what is and isn’t mine to hold. Taking stock of what I ought to continue carrying, as well as those things I could stand to set down: either temporarily or for good.
By now, I know that the act of letting go can make room for better alignment, even if I still feel traces of alignment with those things I’m releasing. That’s the hardest thing about letting go: when parts of what’s being released still feel so good and right.
It’s not a black-and-white thing: this inventorying, this release. But as I lighten my load, I try to lighten up. After all, inventorying isn’t a matter of life or death.
But life and death aren’t so black-and-white, either.
Sure, that buck on the beach had been dead. Had the Munchkin coroner been there, he would have declared the deer “really most sincerely dead.” But his death had to have been recent. When I found his lifeless body, his life was still leaving him. One moment, I could see my reflection in his eye; the next, that same eye was oozing into a black puddle on the sand.
Of the three live deer I saw a few weeks ago, two had fearfully sprinted. But one hadn’t. Something about her had felt more alive than the others.
Maybe that should be my litmus test for this inventorying process. Where is the life pulsing most strongly? We should all move toward that: gently, softly, compassionately. We should all move toward it with trust.
I know, I know. I’m breaking Pam Houston’s rule.
I keep trying to extract all this ~meaning~ from the deer, when really, I should let the mystery guide me. I should keep floating in it.
But for me, writing is part of the floating. It always has been.
I’m not alone in that. Whenever my students get frustrated with the writing process, wishing they could just get it right, I remind them of the origins of the word “essay.” It comes from essayer, the French word for to try.
When we write, we’re trying.
A week prior to my most recent deer sighting, Lexi had done a reading with me from the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit oracle deck. This is something she does almost every time we spend time together. (Side note: if you don’t have a friend in your life who pulls a card with you every single time you hang out, you need to fill that void ASAP. Or maybe consider becoming that friend yourself.)
It was raining that day. Our first day of rain in over a month. Lex and I cozied up with blankets, taking care to keep them away from the foot of the bed where Susan was snoozing, because she is, for some reason, afraid of blankets. (Rescue dogs, amirite?) We had a tray between us, where our steamy mugs of tea—peppermint for me, rooibos for Lex—were steeping.
Lexi fanned out her deck for me, which is how I like to pull. People who pull cards looooove to talk about the methods behind their pulls. How long do you shuffle, if you even shuffle at all? Do you cut the deck? Fan it out? Select straight from your hands?
When Lexi pulls a card for herself, she keeps the deck in her ring-covered hands, closing her eyes and savoring a quiet, private moment. There’s always a smile on her face.
I, on the other hand, keep my eyes open, unblinking, staring down at the fanned deck. I’m feeling for something magnetic. A card that, for unexplainable reasons, stands out.
That day, I pulled the deer.
A deer personality, Lexi read from her guidebook, draws others in “with a quiet tenderness.” The card calls for gentleness. Compassion. Nurturance. Receptivity.
I’d just begun my inventorying process. This reminder to go about it gently, with compassion toward myself, was critical. Sturdy intentions to carry into a brand new year.
“I need to get that deck,” I told Lexi. When she left my house, I washed our tea mugs and ordered the deck & guidebook online.
Then it only took a week for the card to spring to life before me on the trail.
How receptive my doe friend was. How nurturing with her attention.
On solo hikes and long walks, I like to give myself thought prompts. Guided moving meditations. That day on the trail, freshly graced with the trusting doe, I kept finishing this sentence:
It feels nurturing to…
Beneath those towering maritime oaks, I was flooded with ideas of what authentic nurturing might look like right now. I thought of all the ways I nurture others—a natural path for a college professor, writing coach, and recovering codependent like myself to take. But mostly, I pushed myself to consider what would feel most nurturing of myself.
These days, it feels nurturing to embrace this Florida winter magic.
It feels nurturing to take my time moisturizing my dry skin.
It feels nurturing to journal without ruminating.
It feels nurturing to ask friends for help.
It feels nurturing to let myself off the hook.
To give myself grace.
It feels nurturing to invite abundance to pull up a chair and stay awhile.
When I got home from the trail, still reeling from my card pull come to life, there was a box waiting for me at the front door. The deck—my deck—had arrived.
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I love that deck. My NY's pull was The Bat.
What a delightful read, Hurley. I love the meaning that’s rising for you in these deer encounters. It reminds me to take more walks on my own and be present.