01052021

 The startled deer...

Tracking in the woods in dry litter, but wet soil underneath: some good prints.

Following a doe down by the property line. I know her well: she raided our garden in the spring, ate our apples this autumn, now paws for acorns in the cold. I suspect she seldom travels far from our land.

I came across a great twisting print, deep in the soil. You could almost feel the mass of her body making it as she stopped to turn. A quick movement. Lots of energy behind it. She was startled. By what?

Just as I wondered this, the neighbor's dog started to bark, directly where the doe's head would have turned when she stopped to make this print.

We think highly of our storytelling abilities, our great symbols, our legends, our heroes, our gods. Or all the stories we tell about ourselves: trial, transformation, grace, betrayal.

But like roots themselves, the root of storytelling lie closer to the soil than the self or the sublime. Stories are for killing. We're not fast, we're not strong, we can't fly. The nails at the ends of our fingertips are smooth, blunt. Almost comical. Our jaws are pitifully small, as if more designed for our constant yammering than anything related to feeding or the violence that begets it.

We can spin a tale, though: the days grow hot, the herd will soon be thirsty and graze close to the river; we will get there before them, lie in wait... The moon waxes and there are leopards about; we will keep the children closer to the fire the next few nights until we move camp, otherwise we will lose one to the night...

Stories are for killing, stories are for not being killed. That sounds dramatic, but it's not. Most of the time we can afford to forget it all. How many times does the cautionary tale leave the lips of the elder before it is ever put to use, reflex-like, to save a life? Many, many, many.

In our current explosion of humanity it's easy to forget that everything we are is built upon generation over generation of small victories over death, where sometimes it was only the power of the story which stood between life and not-life. So it was, so will it be again.