The night
air was impossibly chilly for the first week of August; my carefully sunblocked arms almost a joke under my
inadequate sweatshirt layer. Amazing how
the temperature falls with the sun in these mountains.
Tioga County
is a place where my spirit is restored. With every stroke of the canoe oar, every
frog refrain, I can feel those bothersome pinprick daggers of stress just draining
away. It is my last slice of summertime heaven each year before the inevitable
return to fulltime work.
My husband
rented an enormous red pickup truck for this year’s trek to Nauvoo. This is his idea of great fun, driving along
in a vehicle large enough to climb atop mountains and flatten innocent Volkswagens
without any noticeable interruption in the rhythm of his glee or in the torturous blaring of country music
on the radio.
It was our
first night at the house and I was doing my annual duty, taking a turn “driving”
for deer-spotting. (Another benefit to
having a gigantic red pickup truck at our disposal is being able to stuff
multiple eager bodies into the flatbed of the truck for this nightly ritual.) I go along to drive once or twice during the
week so that Jim too has the opportunity to stand precariously against the back
of the truck cab, brandish the blinding light, feel the cool breeze drying out
his eyeballs, and try to steer clear of the sometimes unavoidable side effect
of kamikaze bugs in the teeth. My son
and daughter were with us. And this year
we’ve got the extra blessing of my daughter-in-law to be, joining us for her
first foray into the wonderfully bizarre subculture of spotting for deer. If you thought deer-spotting was just for
hunters, you were wrong. We, the
bleeding heart bug-rescuing anti-hunters, are also avid fans.
I’ve driven
many a vehicle on the roads of Morris and Nauvoo over the past 22 years as my
family and friends spot for deer and tally marks to our nightly animal counts. Driving a vehicle in this manner is
practically child’s play. The mood is festive,
windows open, the night is black, and other cars and trucks are an extreme
rarity. The speedometer never goes above 19 miles per hour and is more likely to
linger around 6. We pretty much crawl
along the roads (many of them dirt) and scan the cornfields, meadows, and
wooded lots for animals.
It takes
about an hour for our usual tour. We
take turns shining our incredibly bright light into the darkness of the
peaceful Tioga landscape. Great jubilation
is experienced when we spy a set of beady little amber eyes, reflecting the
light back to us. Buck with racks so imposingly
heavy we wonder how they can hold their heads upright. Communities of graceful doe, flicking their
sensitive ears at the annoyance of our clan’s admiring clatter while their fawn,
spotted and curious, rise on their knobby uncertain knees to check us out from
their carefully smashed beds of clover.
Our spotting
is not limited to the deer population. As we hope for bear sightings, we count
raccoons, opossum, fox, rabbits, scraggly kittens, toads and skunks. We’ve heard the horrible scream of bobcats
but haven’t yet encountered one during spotting. Only cows and horses, captive
in the fencing of local farms, are exempt from our count.
Many family
memories have been born while spotting in Nauvoo. Standing upright through the sunroof of a
Saab holding the lamp with winter gloves against the extreme summer night chill. Gripping the roof rack while seated precariously
on the side window of a Volvo for a better view. Accidentally spotting the same poor old horse
year after year, finally determining we have permanently blinded him; since
requiring that we greet him with “Poor thing, he’s only GOT the one good eye…” Eerie strains of a song by Adele inexplicably
and creepily emanating out of a seemingly deserted field of corn. My noble
father-catching my arm at exactly the last possible moment before I fell
headfirst off the back of the old spotting truck in my haste to switch seats
just as driver Jim was pressing his foot on the gas…
On this
particular night, things felt a bit atypical behind the steering wheel. This was because the raised curve of the dashboard
on Jim’s new red toy was about even with my eyebrows. I felt like a kindergartner in the teacher’s
chair. It didn’t seem helpful to share
the potentially disheartening information of the blind driver’s challenge with
my passengers, so I kept it to myself.
In retrospect I should have circled back for one of my pillows to give
myself a boost. I saw pretty much nothing of the road in front of the truck and
gauged my approximate location by best guess.
At the leisurely speed I traveled, my method worked well until the final
right turn - at which point several of my flatbed riders complained that the
entire right portion of the overlarge truck was apparently no longer on the
road at all. Oops. (Let’s just say I don’t think Jim will be letting me take the truck
into Wellsboro for shopping…)
But all was
well. Because there is something too
marvelous to describe about traveling at a snail’s pace on a dark country road
with the people I love in tow. Hearing
their comfortable murmuring alongside the nighttime cricket-song is a
symphony. And the remarkable barefaced stars
are my witness; their twinkle unconstrained by the artificial lights of any town.
