While Gem was out shopping for some groceries because we hadn’t had a chance to pick up food along the way to the camp site, I took my little Okapis for a walk, a little hike in the woods and we came face-to-face with a deer. It was standing along the side of the path and we almost missed it. When I saw it, I told my Okapis to stop. We all froze and I pointed to where it was standing there, watching us, wondering why we were traipsing through its home. Both my Okapis started to move towards our deer, but I stopped them once again.

“Just watch, guys. Don’t move or we’ll scare him away.”

And we watched. Then it turned slightly, flipping its tail.

“Do you see his white tail? See how he flips it?”

“Yeah” they said bursting with excitement. This wasn’t the zoo. This was real and we were very close, maybe five feet away.

Before long, our deer started to move away, no longer curious about us, no longer viewing us a potential threat, but ready to get back with his friends and family. Within a couple of steps it disappeared back into the woods, leaving no trace of himself behind, except in our memories. We talked about it all the way to our campsite and couldn’t wait to tell Mommy. As we walked back, I looked up into the sky, towards God, and smiled, saying a “Thank you” in my mind. Deer have always meant something special in my life, always meant that everything was going to be okay and my anxieties about camping disappeared. It was also the first time that deer had appeared while I was with my Okapis. It felt really special, as if my Okapis were being included in something spiritual – even if they didn’t quite get it yet.

My first experience with deer came in college. We didn’t have much deer growing up in my neighborhood in Philly, but where I went to college, out in western New York State, deer were plentiful. And they saved my life, I believe.

I was angry and seething one night. I don’t remember what caused it, some episode with my mother, who knows. It was late at night, but I jumped into my car and took off anyway. It didn’t bother me the roads were icy, black ice, impossible to see at night, I was not thinking clearly.

I started speeding on the back roads I knew pretty well, my lights on high – at least I had been smart enough to do that – and that was how I saw them. Two deer standing in the middle of the road, refusing to budge despite my car flying down the highway, my lights flashing, my horn honking, disturbing the natural order of things.

They turned and looked at me and didn’t move. I lowered my lights, came to a complete stop and watched them. They took a step or two, but this was their home and so what if some idiot paved a highway right through it, this was theirs and they were going to leave when they were ready to leave.

Seeing their deliberateness somehow kick-started my own brain and I realized what a stupid thing I was doing. I turned around right in the middle of the road, while these two deer just watched me. For some time I was still able to see them in my rear-view mirror, until I drove out of sight. It became the first of several powerful, spiritual experiences with deer. I believe, and still do, that God was looking out for me that night. God has let me down many times in my life and I have issues with God about all that wasn’t done, but in my heart I know those deer were acting out God’s wishes. I don’t know how to explain it, but I felt such a sense of purpose, sitting in front of those deer, realizing that I couldn’t make them move, that I was acting like an idiot and was lucky I hadn’t gotten myself killed.

Through much of college, I had a special place that I would drive to when it was dusk and watch a herd of deer eat. I always felt privileged to see them and enjoyed sharing it with people special in my life.

Another special deer experience also happened a long time ago. I was breaking up with a girlfriend and things were pretty hairy. I felt I didn’t know what I was doing, whether I was making a good decision or not and whether it was going to work out for me or not. I prayed to God asking for a sign to help me determine whether I was making the best decision for me or not. I was driving home, my head swirling with all of these thoughts, not sure what the heck I was doing when, in a place I had driven by literally thousands of times in my life, I saw two deer munching away, looking up at me as I drove by. I almost broke down and cried. I had never seen deer in my neighborhood in my life. I had driven on that road to go to school every day for years and years. But that night, when I asked for a sign, there they were, out of nowhere, no woods nearby, just chewing on a small stretch of grass, as if they were waiting for me. That was the only time I ever saw deer in that location.

Gem and I went camping for 28 straight days a year before our Okapis were born. We flew out west and traveled from Seattle all the way down the Pacific coast and ended up in Denver having traveled through National Parks all along the way. Twice during that trip we had some stressful situations, nights where we were not sure if we were going to find a place to camp and how it was all going to work out. Both times we saw deer right in front of us, another sign that everything was going to be okay. And it always was. Deer have never led me astray.

They have appeared on long trips, they have appeared in other situations, almost always when I am stressed or worried whether things are going to work out. But the most incredible deer experience I ever had happened in a busy street 10 minutes from my house in Philly, in another place where I never seen deer – before or since. I was driving by and saw a mother deer and her baby. While I was stuck at a light, something had startled both deer, maybe the hundreds of cars speeding by, who knows. The mother took off for the tall grass and bushes on the side of the road. The baby dropped to the ground to hide – except she was in a little grass island in the middle of the busy intersection. Cars were speeding by her and she refused to move. The mother paced back and forth in the tall bushes, not able to do anything, but unwilling to leave her baby behind. I couldn’t see her except for her silhouette in the bushes. I pulled over to the side of the road and waited maybe ten minutes for something to happen, but nothing did. The mother continued to pace and her baby refused to move, frightened by the cars that never stopped whizzing by.

After some more time, I walked over to her to try and gently scare her into moving, but she remained perfectly still. All that was moving were her muscles for breathing. I nudged her with my foot to try and get her to run across the street to her mother, but she refused to move. I swear I heard her mother grunt, angry at me, trying to scare me off, but still too scared herself to do anything more than that. Finally, I put a jacket around my hands and lifted this little deer in my hands, holding her away from my body so it wouldn’t get my scent. I walked across this crazy street with the baby deer in my jacket-covered hands and as I put it down, its legs unfolded and it ran to its mother and they bounded away.

I was still glowing from that incredible experience, my chance to save a deer, to give back to them some of what they had given me over the years, when I checked my answering machine. While I was helping this little deer reach its mother, my own mother had called me for only the second time since she had cut me out of her life. The irony, of course, was not lost on me, and what better way to prepare for the nightmare of dealing with her than experiencing a miracle.

Seeing a deer only five feet away from me and my Okapis felt like more than just luck. It felt like my experiences with deer were being passed down to my own Okapis, that maybe deer would always be a symbol in our family that everything was going to be okay. Because the weekend certainly was okay, one of the best weekends I have had in a long, long time.