Reflections on Deer and Turkey Watching

by Memingwanz

Photos courtesy of Webshots

Age is a neat thing, as you get wiser and learn a lot of neat coping skills you lacked at age 16. However, your body does just the opposite your mind is doing - it's crumbling around you as you develop this fine, analytic, computer-like mind that can solve any problem you encounter. Your legs get weak, along with your bladder, and sometimes you find yourself wishing you could walk a whole lot faster to get to the potty!

So, if you're smart, you learn quickly to make adjustments for what the body can no longer do, so you avoid huge frustrations, but still do fun things as much as possible.

For example, Aunt Rose lived in and around West Branch for many years, and saw all kinds of animals in her backyard and other nearby areas. She loves to go as far north as she can get - she has made the circle tour around Lake Superior and has been up in Canada numerous times, has seen moose, bear, and elk in the wild, etc. She also loves to go north for the colors, but her failing health prevents her from traveling that far anymore. She is on 80 mg. of Lasix daily, plus other cardiac meds and stuff for her emphysema. She can walk, very slowly, maybe half a block before starting to feel winded. She mentioned to me a while back that she loves to look for deer, but can't drive herself anymore, due to a vision problem.

So yesterday, I decided to see if we could do the deer watching thing close to home to accommodate her health and our finances, and this is what we did.

We started out, Aunt Rosie and me, on a search-and-find for deer. You start out about 4:00pm, because that's the time, around here, that deer are supposed to begin to move about for their evening meal. We went out by Chippewa Nature Center in Midland, as that's the wildest place I could find nearby to hang out in during the 5 years I lived there. I always saw large numbers of deer at or near the center, so thought it would be a good starting point for deer watching - not too far from home, and wouldn't take too much gas.

Here's the animals we saw while cruising the perimeter roads of the nature center, and taking a short walk at the marsh: 6 bluebirds, migratory, 4 robins, a whole flock of cedar waxwings, one honkin' big hawk who perched and posed 3 times for us before going deeper into the woods, one diving water-fowl who looked suspiciously like a loon, but I suspect was a merganser (their silhouettes look a lot alike), 5 deer (in two separate bunches), and a herd of turkeys, 23 to be exact. (Sometimes turkeys can be fun, if they are not people-kind.) More critters than we ever expected to see just 3 miles from downtown Midland!

We sat under the pavillion at the marsh and had a little picnic lunch, looking out over the ponds and watching for more birds as we swatted at occasional mosquitoes. We watched the rain come; for awhile, it was out on the water, and we could see the drops form a line as they crept closer and closer to us, falling softly and soundlessly, until we finally heard the patter on the leaves of the brightly colored trees and bushes behind us. We marveled at the demarcation line of rain, and how funny it always seems to us to have it raining in the back yard, and the sun shining out in the front of the house!

Such a simple thing, but noticing it brought us both a warm sense of pleasure. Nature and its wonders are something to be loved and shared.

We drove through the Northwood campus: it sits atop a sand ridge, and the maples there are always flaming red this time of year - we were not disappointed. We saw three deer grazing on a lawn while we cruised slowly along the Titabawassee River on the other side of the college. They were so tame they didn't run when we stopped and ran the windows down. They slowly grazed their way across the lawn and disappeared out of sight between two houses. We shared stories of great animal sightings from our pasts, and of good times and some funny stuff that had happened during long-ago camping trips.

Then we hit MickyD's for a coffee and headed back to Saginaw and home to my chair and book. ( Always read before hitting the hay - trying to teach myself how to spell! :>) So - even though it rained on us, gently and softly, we saw the colors, the animals, had a nice chat and verbalized a lot of feelings to each other that only animal lovers can do, and gave each other a lot of comfort and love for a few hours. Dearly wish I could do it more often, and will try.

The whole point is, we did what we could do, with what we had. It wasn't Marquette and the shores of Lake Superior, but the color was still good, and the animals cooperated, and a little old Nature Lover got to be out once more doing what she loves to do. Actually, two little old Nature Lovers. And most of the roads we were on were paved, which is so much easier on the truck! Better than getting stuck on some two-track way out in the boonies, even if we were only 3 miles from downtown Midland and could still hear traffic noise from M-20. It faded out, I tell you, when we started seeing the animals.

So we adjusted - we had our color tour, saw the animals, and the turkeys didn't get us down. Adjusting and adapting - good things to know how to do if you are limited in budget and ability to travel long distances (our round trip was a scant 30 miles).

And this morning, after the rain, the sun lights up the flaming red vines way high in the poplar trees over the fence here, and the ordinary yellow leaves look gold in this rain-washed light. And though I can't see them, I can smell the woods with their clean, spicy, fall aroma, wafting over the fence to me here in my little kitchen.

See - getting old isn't all bad - providing you have a computer to talk about it with!

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