What the deer taught me
Growing gardens in wild spaces
And God
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go someplace
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man.
by Althea Davis
When I first moved to the woods, many people told me growing a garden here was useless. The deer, the rabbits, the wild would swallow it whole.
That mentality permeates the modern psyche. If something isn’t “for” us, it’s against us. We see this in the decades long debate over the protection of wolves in the upper peninsula. Many folks of course want to advocate for these creatures who were here long before us. But there are many who claim they are dangerous, they will snatch your pets, livestock and children in the night like some twisted fairytale.
They don’t know that wolves mate for life, sticking with just one partner through the harshest winters, sickness and stretches of hunger. They don’t know how they will sacrifice themselves for the survival of the pack, or that their haunting howls are complex communication channels, and how they balance the ecosystem when allowed to thrive.
I saw this mentality in my county Facebook group. A local was looking for someone to trap and eliminate the beavers on their property because they were “destroying the environment”, as if they knew more about what creates balance in an ecosystem better than an animal who has been tending trees, water and land in the same way for millennia. What they didn’t say was that they just didn’t like the look of the land once beavers whittled the trees to stumps.
They don’t know that beavers are engineers, creating diverse habitats for fish and insects in the waters they shape, encouraging species biodiversity in the birds, mink, muskrats and otters that visit. They didn’t consider that beaver habitats increase the number of herbaceous plants in their environment by 33%, or that their dams filter the water creating a cleaner waterway, or that their teeth are orange because of an iron-rich enamel coating that protects them while chewing trees.
Whenever us humans are not on the top of the food chain, whenever something does not conform to our idea of aesthetics or convenience, we deem it destructive, dangerous, a plague of the most dire proportions.
I heard an Amazonian elder once say:
“the less you understand something, the easier it is to destroy”
They were referring to the big oil companies that are a constant threat to the existence of the rainforest. While it may seem like an extreme comparison between those who say gardens can’t be grown in the woods and those who would sacrifice our source of oxygen for the sake of “progress”, the sentiment is the same. It’s easier to put the blinders on than to try to understand the complexities woven throughout all things, because that might just force us to question the things we thought we knew.
When we start to open ourselves up to something that may challenge our world view, it forces us to shift perspective by a few degrees. Only then can empathy and understanding be born. Only then are we willing to sacrifice some of our comfort for the greater balance of the world as a whole.
And so, when the wildlife who lived in these woods was labeled a nuisance, I created a garden.
To my surprise, the wildlife left the majority of the plants alone. The herbs and flowers that I love grew undisturbed aside from the occasional insect feast. Even then I was happy to share my bounty.
Then one day I was making my rounds in the garden and saw the pepper plant tops were chewed straight off. The bottom leaves survived, but I figured these had become a sacrifice to the forest.
However, a week or so later the plants slowly started putting out new growth, becoming bushier, a greater abundance of flowers appearing, meaning more peppers in the future.
It was the deer that taught me you should pinch back peppers plants. How had I never known that? But I wouldn’t have known that at all if I had built tall fences, trying to separate the garden from the wild. What an insane idea to try and divide nature from nature.
Yes some plants may become offerings. I often find deer prints in my garden beds, a few plants trampled in the process. But there are so many more important lessons I can learn when I open myself and my gardens up to the unknown, to release control.
The deer taught me this same lesson again a year or so later. I planted swaths of sticky purple New England asters. Every year they would get so tall and leggy they would simply fall over. Until one year I came into the garden and saw the plants were chewed down to about a foot above the soil.
Sure enough, by the time they bloomed, the plants had become stout and bushy with beautiful blooms and strong straight stalks. I had never heard that you could cut back asters to force them to branch out. The only advice I was ever given was to stake them, which still left them a bit floppy and ungraceful. Nature knows better.
The forest, the deer, humbled me yet again, always, over and over.
Now I always look for those lessons, not just from the plants, but from the wider landscape around me, in the losses and the surprises. So this is me passing along the lesson given to me by the deer. Pinch back your peppers, cut back your asters, let down your walls, take down your fences, see what comes to your doorstep.
{Now if all of your plants begin to feel like a sacrifice more than an offering, it might be time to grow different plants all together. Luckily deer aren’t fans of most herbs if that’s what you’re growing.}
Much love,
Val