Turning of Days: Lessons From Nature, Season, and SpiritExemplo

Day 3: As the Deer

There’s a road that dips and curves down to town. It’s barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass and the grade is steep—too steep for the school buses and delivery trucks that insist on using it. To make matters more interesting, the local white-tailed deer are determined that their path must also cross this road, right in the middle of the steepest part. 

One of the first things you learn in navigating country roads is that white-tailed deer have their own paths that transverse the countryside, cutting across fields, through forests, and even across Randall Road. So you learn to look out for them because when bone and metal and flesh and fiberglass collide, there are no winners. 

But I wonder, Why don’t these deer seem to care to look out for us? Why do they insist on following their own way even when it endangers them? Exactly how long have they been following their ancient paths? 

To be fair, these deer paths existed long before we interrupted them with our houses and highways. More than simply creatures of habit, deer are creatures of memory and need, driven to find the shortest, safest distance between bedding area, grazing land, and water source. As mothers raise their young along these same paths, they learn them well and so it continues. Fittingly, a track that has been trampled by enough use is called a desire path. It’s the path that will take you to your desire, and soon enough you’ll know it by heart.

In Psalm 42, the psalmist likens his desire for God to a deer’s longing for a water source. Older translations have rendered the first line of the psalm as “as the hart panteth,” but this can be confusing to us. The image is not of a deer overcome by fatigue, panting for a drink so much as that of a deer steadily, persistently following his longing to water. Less about desperation, it’s more about how desire and habits drive us in predictable ways. 

And suddenly we realize that we too are creatures of habit and memory. We realize how certain paths have been passed down to us and how we lead our young down those same paths. We realize the significance of teaching them to love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their strength. And so we talk about them when we’re bedding down and when we’re rising up and when we’re walking along the road. So that together we’ll find our way to what our hearts long for. We’ll find our way to Him.