cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Watch in the Desert Listen. This is true. Every word of it. Yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of Simon's miracle. October 19th. At 10 minutes past five o'clock in the afternoon, I shouldered my rifle and walked to the same spot where I was when I killed the deer on the day of the miracle last year. The exact same time that I went out last year. I sat in the exact same place and looked in the same direction and within 4 minutes at what I believe to be EXACTLY ONE YEAR TO THE VERY MINUTE, a deer appeared in that ghostly way that they have. The doe, clearly sent by divine providence, fell down at the shot before getting up and crashing into the woods. In this sense, it differed from the events of October 19th, 2007. I shot that one last year though the spine and it dropped like a sack of rocks. This one yesterday ran about 15 yards before collapsing in the woods. The shot went a bit forward of where I'd intended, technically a neck shot although the stunning bullet performance did in fact cause some inexplicable hydrostatic shock to the lungs. A minute later, as I walked to the spot where it had been hit (to look for blood and other signs which could tell me what sort of hit it had been), I caught a glimpse of the deer in the woods to my right. Moving a bit while laying on the ground. I took a quick shot through the trees at the head and then walked over to the creature as it lay dying. I removed my hat and I spoke to it all of the things that must be said at such a time. The great tan and white chest heaved irregularly a few times and then the deer was still. One year to the very minute. I tell you that this can not be dismissed. It can not. And I will say something else, which is that I have not felt the slightest bit of guilt in killing these last few deer. That whole sense is gone. The reason why all guilt is gone is that the hand of divine intervention has become so screamingly obvious in the particulars of my hunting. I cannot deny that there is apparantly a God and he or she is wholly in support of what I am doing. The amount of meat from this deer was tremendous. We will be eating it for a long time. My only regret is that about 2 hours into the butchering I realized that I'd left the liver out in the woods with the rest of the gut pile. I should have cooked that for Simon. Night was fast on me as I finished the gutting and it my haste I'd just carved the whole mess out and failed to salvage anything from it. I must not call it a waste, because something will eat it. Indeed, something almost certainly already has. A fox or a coyote or racoon or bobcat or possum or bear or something else I've not even thought of. Ida was with me as I gutted it. She finds nothing disgusting. She is good company for this sort of thing. Perhaps some day she might make a good surgeon. Each deer appears and then dies at exactly the right moment. Exactly when it must. As for the buck that I missed earlier this month, it was not time. I wasn't ready for it. It is good that I missed it. It was enough simply to see it. To know that the buck exists. To feel that slightly bitter thing in my heart when I think of it. It was not time to kill the buck. It was time to see it and to feel my heart racing and then to miss it. 8:42 a.m. - 2008-10-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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