Nightglow Window

Buttons and the Wind in the Pines

So I found my spot to relax, listen, and absorb.

I wake in mid afternoon, after a long nap and a longer drive up from Laguna Niguel to Christy's mom's house in Camp Nelson.

It was the wind that woke me.

Swaying gently in a hammock between two 80-foot Ponderosa pines, I hear the wind coming from a long way off, whistling up the canyon on this warm afternoon. Just ahead, past the green lawn, stand a Douglas Fir, a Coast Redwood, and another pine. Each is impressive and each bends to the wind differently, making a unique sound.

I could make some deep comparison here, some metaphor on the human condition, but I'm too relaxed, the beer bottle still cool where I jammed it into the hammock's weave.

I'll let deep thoughts pass today.

The breeze makes the hammock sway the slightest bit, but I'm otherwise absolutely still. I doze, but something is tickling the back of my mind.

Some noise.

I don't move. Then, stately as a prince, a buck walks right past the hammock. It's a mule deer, a big one. He's what I'd call an "eight-point buck," but I learn later he's called a four-pointer here in California or a "four by four" (much more descriptive to me). He walks not six feet away from me and begins to feed on the food Debbie has placed out for the deer.

Others follow in. Many of them skitterish and agitated, worried. They constantly bob their heads up and down at me as I lay motionless in the hammock. Trying to figure me out I guess.

The fawns, still with their spots, are playful, untroubled. The does seem most on edge and aware.

The bucks? At ease. But it’s the two old timers -- not quite stags I learn later -- who are simply regal, bearing their 200-pound stocky frames with grace.

I learn that the older buck is named Buttons (the younger one is Magic).

Buttons has been roaming these mountains for years, Terry thinks he must be nearly eight or nine. "He'll probably go stag next year," he says, noting how one of the points on his massive rack has grown toward the ground, a sign of old age.

I guess things haven't been easy for Buttons. A bow hunter didn't quite finish the job five years ago, and Buttons walked around with a festering wound on his flank for years. Terry wasn't sure he was going to make it, but eventually the wound partially healed, although the scar still looks wet and oozing to me.

It's the first day of bow season today here in the Southern Sierra, but the bucks are safe here on Debbie and Terry's land.

I have no truck against hunters in general, but there in the hammock, so close to these amazing creatures, I understand completely and in a way I never have before that I would take no enjoyment in killing one of them, of watching the light fade from Buttons' eyes as his blood stains the grass.

I can appreciate the hunt, the communing with nature, but I simply have no wish to ever let loose the arrow or pull the trigger.

I know, I know, I'll enjoy a steak or a burger, chicken or pork chop, and I know where these things come from. But I take no part in that slaughter, and I'm glad for that. So let others who enjoy that sort of thing have their fun (?), I will simply swing here in the hammock, watch, and be content.

Later the girls crawl into the hammock with me and we hold still as the herd re-emerges. Sydney and Hannah are as thrilled as I am as the more than dozen deer crowd around.

Debbie and Terry are doing well, but it’s been a tough couple of months. Terry fell and broke his wrist, which eventually needed surgery. They had to take some bone out of his leg and use it in his wrist.

His hand is all swollen up and gives him quite a bit of pain, but he's stoic about it. He makes a bit of a mess shaking up the Cosmopolitans for Debbie and Christy, so Christy takes over the mixing duties. I drink (a little) Cranberry Juice and (a lot of) Vodka until the stars overhead spin a little too gracefully and a little too quickly.

Then I know it's time for bed.


Terry and Debbie's House In Camp Nelson in the Southern Sierra.


This became a very familiar sight.


Why would you want to hurt Buttons?


Me and Hannah, enjoying the sound of the wind.


A young buck. This guy wasn't scared of me one bit.


Sydney was especially good at holding still when the deer were near.


Terry's hand was swollen like a balloon, but he didn't complain.



The Cosmo girl -- three drinks in -- shaken, not stirred.


Cheers!


Camp Nelson, a quaint drinking town with a mountain problem. The newest visitors, looking a wee bit sloshed.