Slow Dance

At dusk in western Wisconsin, a favorite after dinner diversion is deer counting. This is an activity at the extreme contemplative end of sightseeing. As the sun starts going down on a summer evening, you get in the car and drive around on country roads calling out to the other people you’re with, “There’s one. There’s another one, a mother and two babies on the right. Look on the left over at the tree line. There’s five of them up on the hill.” You pass barns and silos but no other cars. You don’t see any neon signs or gas stations. Just white-tailed deer, some spending the evening alone like single people enjoying take-out, some in families, happy or otherwise, and some in large groups the way we are when we gather on holidays or political demonstrations. The impulse to anthropomorphize remains.

Photo by Y S on Unsplash

Even post cataract surgery, I couldn’t see as many as the younger people in the car, but I proudly contributed my share to the count which after less than an hour amounted to 165 deer. No one was wearing an orange vest. We were not at risk physically or morally while counting and the deer were untouched. You cannot imagine anything more benign and more removed from the violence and depredations of life in 2025. We just looked at them and they looked back at us but there were a lot more of them.

The following day, in keeping with the do-no-harm quality of this time of retreat from the racket, I abandoned both caution and dignity and flung myself face down into a blue and white inflated tube for a float down the Red Cedar river. The water that flows past my son’s house is a sort of inlet, so in order to reach the river itself, my grandson had to walk upstream for some distance dragging me behind him like a pasha in a sedan chair. Once we got to the river, my tube was tied to a double occupied by my son and daughter-in-law and the whole unwieldy contraption was guided by my grandson who sometimes swam and sometimes walked behind us down the mostly shallow Red Cedar. With Jonah guiding and his Mom and Dad paddling when necessary, we avoided the downed trees and rocky outcroppings on the shore. I floated mindlessly for more than an hour, taking full advantage of my grandma status. Inside of the the bubble of flowing water and vegetation, there was no sound until just as we were approaching the landing when four monstrous fan boats roared up on us like those dinosaurs in the Jurassic World trailer. Huge. Loud. Macho. Noise and speed, the streaming services that drown out the burbling music of the streams, the invasive species that threaten the stillness that wants so much to welcome us.

As far as dancing goes, I have been known to jump around and work up a sweat out on the floor, but I have always preferred the slow dance, the quiet ballet of being rather than the raucous choreography of doing. Even more so as I age. Give me a good book and a good view, a friendly face. A smile will unwittingly arise. In spite of the ever-increasing rushing and commotion, there have always been people with this impulse, people in retreat from the racket who prefer an earlier deer counting largo pace. On the way back to Minnesota, we got stuck behind a tractor. The tractor was broad in the hips. It commandeered the entire width of the lane heading west. There was nowhere for the farmer to go and no way for us to pass him and get back to the city. We had to recognize our situation and live with it. Finally, the farmer took a turn and left the road open for us to accelerate into the 21st century. Not five minutes later, just when we thought we were on our way home, we came up on four small, rickety horse-drawn buggies. The black buggies were even slower than the tractor, but much smaller so that it did eventually become possible to pass them on the left and look at their drivers. At the reins of each buggy was a Mennonite in a straw hat. The Mennonites were not in a hurry despite the onslaught of Hondas and Subarus coming up behind them. The Mennonites were in league with the white-tailed deer in a universe that could still hear its own heartbeat.

*********************************************************************************************************

Many Voices will now accept contributions from all subscribers. At this critical time, we need to hear what everyone has to say. Please let me know if you have work that you would like to send to seventysomething for our Many Voices feature. Make your voice heard. Write to me at seventysomething9@gmail.com.

Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support seventysomething and have access to the archives. Your ideas are always welcome.

*************************************************************************************************************

Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from your local bookseller.