My YEAR of the DEER

by Mark Mathew Braunstein

Born into the baby boom and raised during the housing boom, I grew up in a fresh new tract of suburbia which bordered an undeveloped state park. While boys my age played baseball and imagined batting themselves into major league stardom, I played in the woods and fantasized seeing deer. Deer embodied for me the wild in the flowery phrase wild animal, an adjective which barely befit the squirrels chewing up the attic, or the rabbits snacking in the garden, or the coons rustling through the garbage. Among local fauna, deer ranked as my uber-animal.

Several years later as an early teenager, I went bird watching in the nearby park and kept an ever watchful eye for deer. I envisioned that they were lurking just around the bend, just across the field, just inside the next clearing, just beyond the forest’s edge. I hoped for the deer to be there. I believed in the deer, same as a child believes in the existence of Santa and his reindeer. But I spotted neither reindeer parked atop my roof, nor deer reside inside my park.

I often did see deer in another undeveloped state park fifteen miles to the east, and in deeper woods still farther east, or along the highway as I rode to these destinations armored in a car. But nary a deer in the park next door. Yet deer inhabited my wildest dreams. Due to political climate change, deer hunters no longer do so, but when I was a child many homeward bound hunters tied their naked quarry to the roofs of their cars. When those brazen hearses sped by, I almost cried. On three occasions I did cry, the last time when I was nearly nine.

Thirty years later, the pivotal day of my life occurred on my 39th birthday. For most of us, our primary rite of passage is marked by our first wedding or our recent divorce, by the birth of our first child or the death of our last remaining parent, by that first sip of wine which began our descent into alcoholism or that final puff of smoke which emanated from the embers of our last cigarette. My turning point was less familial and more singular, less sanguinary and more solitary. Sober but celebratory, I dived off a footbridge into a river and emerged awaiting a wheelchair. I shattered a vertebrae, which in turn injured the fragile bundle of nerves called the spinal cord. Diagnosis: paralysis, but not everywhere, just below the waist. Prognosis: paralysis, but not forever, just the rest of my life.

During rehab, I took a stand against spinal cord injury. After a year, I ambulated with crutches. I still wheel at home, and do nearly everything I used to do, just lower. And yet I continue to crutch elsewhere than at home, and go nearly everywhere I used to go, just slower. A born-again pedestrian, I eventually resumed most of my previous activities, including nature photography. But the world I now photograph has narrowed in focus. I photograph mostly my backyard. And sometimes, in an effort to explore new terrain, I photograph my front yard. I live in a nature preserve, not quite wilderness, but nature nonetheless.

Nearly every night, deer visit my compost heap to plunder my bountiful supply of kitchen scraps. Little ever gets composted, but instead is eaten by many nighttime visitors, among them deer. Yet for many years I rarely saw any deer, just their tracks, especially in the snow. One day in March an already frigid and snowy winter culminated in a blizzard that bestowed a foot of dense wet snow. Snowstorm or not, winter’s critical final month tests the survival of all wild animals. Though fully informed of ecological imperatives why not to feed deer, I seized upon the blizzard as an excuse to go ahead and provide them rations anyway. After such a bitter winter, I rationalized that they deserved to be fed, and that I deserved to feed them. Thus with the aid of a cornucopia of cracked corn, I initiated my Year of the Deer.

Being typically human, I harbored selfish motives. I plotted to lure the deer with bait, and then to shoot them. I mean with a camera. Initially, if I merely appeared at a window, the deer would spook and head for the hills. Smart deer. But slowly, slowly, they allayed their well founded fears of humans, and they began to accept the sight of me from behind my window. The sweet temptation of my judicious allocation of cracked corn provided them with a powerful incentive. So one day early in May, one very pregnant and very hungry doe lingered long enough for me to shoot from my opened window the first of her family photos.

One day in June, while puttering around outside in my wheelchair, I happened upon two fawns. Or maybe they happened upon me. The two fawns stood transfixed, I sat spellbound, and time’s clock stopped. They were the first fawns I had ever beheld so newly born, and though old and decrepit I surely was their first human. Then I blinked, and poof, they disappeared. They left me stunned, as though bewildered in the wilderness. When I had cried at age nine, I was awed by the mystery of death. Now I again cried, awed by the miracle of birth.

We humans observe relatively little of deer’s waking hours, as deer are primarily nocturnal. When we do see them during daylight, they are merely grabbing quick snacks between long naps. So picture this. The time is early evening just after sunset, when deer begin their workday in earnest. The place is a small meadow which abuts woodland, except where it borders an ugly house with a beautiful view.

Now picture one doe and her two fawns every evening making their rounds to this meadow, expectant of their daily allowance of cracked corn, assured of easy egress into the adjoining woods. And last and least, picture one lone pathetic human, crippled in a wheelchair, hunkered over a camera mounted on a tripod, day after day wheeling his tripod closer to the ever wary deer. Rather than arm himself with a cannon-like 300mm telephoto lens, instead he practiced patience and fortitude, took up arms with merely 180mm, and instead of a single burst of buckshot he daily purveyed small portions of cracked corn.

Thus I planned to document the doe’s family for three seasons, spring through fall. I started during May from indoors, peering from an opened window. Testing their tolerance, I day by day inched forward until they fled. The next week, proceeded outdoors to the landing of my wheelchair ramp, barricaded behind handrails, shooting from 150 feet away. The next week, rolled down the ramp, still behind its handrails. The next week, exited the ramp, into open view. The next week, wheeled along the driveway, just a foot closer per day. In July, wheeled onto the lawn, then into the field, shooting from 100 feet away. Twice in July and once in August, I witnessed the doe suckling her young, a very vulnerable position for both parties, and so seldom seen or photographed.

During this entire summer, rain was abundant and frequent, vegetation was plump and lush, and with plenty to eat the deer had a field day, indeed many field days. Regardless how well fed they may be, they could always find room for cracked corn, a dessert for which my human presence seemed worth tolerating. Deer’s penchant for corn is so irresistible that they plunder cornfields despite the risk of being shot by guns, compared to which being shot by my camera was far more benign.

One day in September, something supernatural occurred, by which I mean an experience unrestrained by the natural web of life. In the ongoing human war against nature, I long ago had declared a unilateral truce. On this one September day, in a long delayed response, nature reciprocated and embraced me. On this day, sensing or simply guessing for my first time that my unwieldy tripod intimidated them more than did I, I left behind my camera and tripod. I wheeled forward, a bucket of cracked corn on my lap. I discerned no divine calling, felt no deep premonitions, harbored no ulterior motives, instead I preferred simply to sit and watch and wait. I dispensed a line cracked corn onto the ground, wheeled back barely twenty feet, and in a few minutes my familiar family of deer appeared, ventured forward, and began to eat. As though tables were turned, perhaps they had invited me to join them at their dinner table. So there I sat, bucket on lap, my arms outstretched, and to assure them I held no projectiles I turned my palms upward. I did not realize until later that Renaissance painters, for instance Giovanni Bellini, positioned their models for St. Francis into such a pose for receiving the stigmata.

Halfway through their meal, which last but ten minutes before they’ve had their full, my deer family was joined by another neighboring family of deer, a doe with two fawns of her own. I had learned to recognize and differentiate mature deer, usually by the distinct scars or wounds bestowed upon them from earning a living in the wild. Fawns, however, not yet having acquired such injuries, were harder for me to identify. I did recognize this second doe as an infrequent visitor, as though on a guest pass. I dispensed a second line of cracked corn for her family, and then again sat perfectly still, my stillness perfect.

The neighboring doe hesitated, and looked to my own neighborhood doe, as though to ask her, “What’s with this human?” Mine must have answered, “He’s okay, he’s with us.” So the neighbors too stepped forward and began to eat, while I sat perfectly still. Then things got really hairy.

A buck antlered in full regalia, whom I saw only twice before, briefly before dawn, emerged with an entourage of four yearlings, none whom I recognized. I dispensed a third and longer line of cracked corn, and then again I sat perfectly still, while in my head I took a head count. Three plus three plus one plus four. That’s eleven locals and one closely watched intruder, a member of the human horde in the middle of a deer herd.

I was surrounded.

I was close enough for my dulled olfactory nerves to discern for my first time their deer scent, whereas all these months the deer much more deftly had smelled my human scent. Yet more than mere odor abounded. The air was abuzz with deer energy. Soon, too soon, the corn was gone, and so were they. I sat alone, savoring and knowing that I had experienced the most exciting and enriching moment of my life.

Back to my introductory “first family,” in October from 40 feet away I attained my goal of idealized family photos amid classic fall foliage. So I discontinued regular feedings, and during winter doled out corn only when our paths crossed, maybe twice a month. Though they continued to plunder my compost heap, Jane Doe and her two fawns survived the ensuing winter mostly without me, as is meant to be.

While I may have forsaken the deer, they did not abandon me. They took up residence in my dreams. Throughout fall and winter, at least once a week I recalled dreams about deer, and surely dreamed more than I recalled. Indeed, I remembered more dreams about deer than about anything or anyone else, than even about human women. My heart already was taken. My dear deer.

With spring, the fawns grew into yearlings. By March I could sit within 15 feet of the yearlings, thereby both bridging a generation gap and surmounting a species barrier. In April, one of the yearlings developed two protuberances atop its head, so I could deduce that the other yearling displaying no imminent sign of antlers was a doe. A year for a deer often is half a lifetime. Were the yearling doe to survive another year and give birth to fawns, my photos potentially could chronicle one full life cycle. But I declared my photo project completed, thankful for the photos I had gotten. And people who are not happy with what they’ve got, are never happy.

In May, in preparation for her next cycle of newborn fawns, the again pregnant doe drove off her yearlings. Growing up in my presence, the yearlings were far more tolerant of me than was the doe, so I too sent them away simply by my no longer dispensing corn. Thereafter, they did not flee me, but neither did they invite me into their family or into their world.

The peaceful evenings I had shared seated among the deer remain in my memory as more spiritually enriching than any other experience of my life. I shed being merely human, and while seated among them I entered into their world as deer. The endeavor needed much planning and patience. It also required many bushels of cracked corn and exactly one wheelchair. The wheelchair is crucial. Deer recognize it and me from a mile away. Seated, I’m their height, and so less intimidating. Indeed, I could not have entered into this communion afoot. I could attain it only in a wheelchair.

August full moon 2010

TILL DEATH DOES ITS PART

Aphorisms about Death

© Mark Mathew Braunstein

Till Death do us part? And till Death does its part.

Thoughts last longer than laughter. Death lasts longer than thoughts. Life is a joke, and Death is its laughter.

No point in drowning oneself in the sea, if one’s body will be washed ashore.

Believing neither in afterlife nor aftershave, he aspires to grow into a very hairy and very healthy corpse.

No greater incentive for accomplishment than the last minute. No greater accomplishment than the last minute of one’s life.

No point in devoting one’s life to making lots of money, if all one has to show for it is burial in an expensive coffin.

Life is hardly worth the trouble it takes to take one’s life.

People who die in glass coffins should never throw bones.

To contemplate Death! What better reason to live? Because one cannot contemplate Death, if one is dead.

To have something to say, and much time to say it: that is Life. To have something to say, but no time to say it: that is Death.

Always hurrying, yet always late, arriving early only once in one’s life, to one’s own funeral.

He wants to die, but not just die. He wants to die with the sound of the sea in his ears, and the sight of the sky in his eyes.

She ventures in search of Life, and along the way, she meets Death. “What are you doing?” Death asks her. Lying, she answers, “Looking for Death.” “It went that a’ way,” Death says, pointing right to her. So she ventures in search of Death, and along the way, she meets Life. “What are you doing?” Life asks her. Lying, she answers, “Looking for Life.” “It went that a’ way,” Life says, pointing right to Death.

Life is lived day by day, the way pinball is played game by game, in which the winner’s only reward is another game, which the greatest loser never loses.

Unborn, he dreams about Birth. Asleep, he dreams about Death. Awake, he daydreams about having good dreams about Sleep and about having bad dreams about Death. Dead, he dreams about Life.

All of us will die, if not today then tomorrow, if not tomorrow then yesterday, which is like putting the coffin in front of the hearse.

The only two things certain in Life are Death and axes. – Henry VIII

“Moriendi natalis est: Death begins at birth.” In the beginning, waits the end. In a crib, awaits the coffin. In a youthful body, lurks the decayed skeleton.

Once we go to witness two wed. Twice we go to view each dead.

Insincere suicide note to my future self: Breathing is Boring.

A hospice nurse, she feels rapture while tending to the terminally ill, because they make her feel so alive.

Life is a book of aphorisms written in a language that no one speaks, so the book remains opened only to the first page, and everyone dies no wiser than when born, everyone except the author, who dies happily ever after.

© CopyFright

Mark Mathew Braunstein

TAKE the PAIN

© Mark Mathew Braunstein

published 2004 as an autobio chapter in the 44 autobio anthology From There to Here: Stories of Adjustment to Spinal Cord Injury, edited by Gary Karp and Stanley Klein, published by No Limits Communications

http://www.amazon.com/There-Here-Stories-Adjustment-Spinal/dp/0971284229/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product

The worst day of my life was my 39th birthday. Sober but celebratory, I dived off a footbridge into a river and emerged in a wheelchair. I shattered my T-12 vertebrae and injured that fragile bundle of nerves called the spinal cord. Diagnosis: paralysis. Not everywhere, just below the waist. Prognosis: paralysis. Not forever, just the rest of my life. I was a wheelchair, and life was an inaccessible brick wall. But where there’s a wheel, there’s a way.

Though I seldom leave things unfinished or undone, it was my good fortune that my spinal cord injury was incomplete, that my cord was not severed, and that during rehab, my functional level progressed to L-2 and L-3 (and later to L-4 and L-5). During rehab, I began to take a stand against SCI. And one year post-injury, I began to ambulate with crutches and leg braces. I still wheel at home and at my workplace, and do nearly everything I used to do, just lower. But I continue to crutch everywhere else in between, and go nearly everywhere I used to go, just slower.

My mind dwells inside my body, but my life dwells more inside my mind. My body matters, but my mind matters more. Although my body is broken, my mind is not broken, and so my life is not broken.

When tragedy strikes, the stricken can choose to live with it, or to die from it, or to cry over it, or to laugh at it. I choose to laugh. Sure, early on, I suffered some sorrow and much pain. And sure, on some days, I contemplated suicide over my loss of a whole body that abruptly had been halved. But on other days, I did the math and added up that half a body is more than none. Indecisive, I made a secret pact with myself, the one person I could trust to keep a secret. I placed myself on a two-year waitlist. If then not fully recovered, I would reconsider suicide. Two years later, I only half-recovered my lower body, yet fully resumed my life. I half-forgot my past, and fully forgot my pact.

Now, more than thirteen [ update: 19 ] years post-injury, my every step contributes to a journey from there to here, from can’t to can, from injury to rehab, from disability to recovery. My journey includes some hyperbolic detours and humiliating downturns, especially because paraplegia is not just about “walk.” It impacts four other four-letter words, namely “feel” plus the three sacral functions. Initially, all four took a hike.

I regained feelings of fullness both of bowel and of bladder. But, pardon my bedpan humor, I still pray for piss. My penis does not feel, nor do I feel my penis. Yet I do feel my fingers and do feel my tongue. So I prefer to make love to a woman the way a woman makes love to a woman. “Come” never did come back, but ejaculation and orgasm are anti-climatic compared to being tireless in bed. Some call it tantric yoga. I call it paraplegia.

Now about “number two.” Until my body hotwired its toilet training, accidents often reduced me to a whimpering fool. Other adults have accidents too, but they don’t have to sit in them. During my third year post-injury, I slowly got my shit together — literally. I regained bowel function by sheer luck of the draw, but also by perseverance, having remained steadfast in my renunciation of suppositories, they being pharmaceutical drugs. Had I used and thereby become dependent upon them, my bowel function might have verged on the edge of recovery, but I never would have known it.

Prior to my injury, I had abstained from pharmaceutical drugs for seventeen years. After SCI, I avoid them still. Even the painkillers. Especially the painkillers. I abstained from them even during the calamitous first week while immobilized in a Stryker frame, that human rotisserie in which its occupant is flipped every two hours. Each flip inflicted excruciating pain, but I endured the pain.

But why endure the pain? Because most analgesics kill all sensations, both painful and pleasurable. Because drugs that inhibit feelings of sensation, inhibit feelings of emotion too. One way to hasten healing is to feel love — your own love of self, and others’ love of you. Others who? Others tending to and taking care of you — doctors and nurses. And others in attendance who care about you — family and friends.

I always heal ahead of schedule due in part to my abstinence from pharmaceutical painkillers. I can’t cite scientific studies to bolster my assertion, because such studies don’t exist. We do know that all drugs pose risks, and all drugs produce unintended side effects. So if you can take the pain, don’t take the painkiller.

Such a credo, “Take the Pain,” has fostered my acceptance of paraplegia generally. After thirteen years of it, I indeed should accept my paraplegia. But I was just as O.K. with it after thirteen days. Friends describe my attitude as stoic acceptance or Buddhist detachment. I describe it as just me.

Thousands every year sustain SCIs. Someone seemed destined to occupy my bed in the rehab ward. It might as well have been me because I could take the pain. Next door to me, every night, and all night, a middle-aged woman wailed and wailed. “Why me?” was the gist of her wailing. While crossing the street, as though struck by lightning she was hit by a hit-and-run motorist. My attitude of “Why not me?” differed from hers because I had no one to blame but myself. No one pushed me off that footbridge. I dove of my own free will. Perhaps I’ve been in free fall ever since. The ride has been a wild and wide detour to my life that, if given the choice, I certainly would not have taken.

But given no choice, I endure paraplegia’s detours and downturns. Children’s stares and, what’s worse, adults’ averted glances. Flat tires and, worse, dog doo on fully inflated tires. Inaccessible public restrooms and, worse, no clean place to cath once inside the stall. The social stigma of being looked down upon for being crippled and, worse, the social isolation from being overlooked when you’re seated at four feet tall. Not to mention the various health risks and complications, which I won’t mention. Yet no matter how severe the humiliation nor deep the sorrow nor crippling the pain, I rest assured that after a good night’s sleep, I’ll get over it the next morning. “Take two aspirations and call me in the morning.”

(Some object to the word “cripple.” If I’m not “crippled,” who the heck is? An “invalid” person and an “invalid” thing are the same word assigned different pronunciations and ascribed with different definitions. A person described as invalid thus can be associated as being a deficient object. It’s politically correct to call an injured animal a cripple, so I side with the injured animal, in the same way I side with the scapegoat, the underdog, and the sitting duck.)

Occasionally I have achieved some lofty goals attainable only through paraplegia. Being very visibly crippled has some perks, which I’ve enlisted to advance social causes. And I don’t mean curb cuts.

Soon after my injury in 1990, I learned of an herbal remedy that both relaxes SCI spasms more effectively than do tranquilizers and relieves SCI pains more safely than do narcotics (not that I care about the pain). In 1996, in Europe, I procured a prescription for that herbal remedy from a Dutch physician. In January, 1997, emboldened with my prescription and encouraged by recent referendums in California and Arizona, I wrote an essay about my use of medicinal marijuana.

Connecticut’s major newspaper, The Hartford Courant, displayed my public confession prominently and illustrated it very memorably. That single editorial garnered more reader response and more media attention than all my other books and articles combined. Since then, I’ve remained Connecticut’s preeminent poster child for medicinal marijuana, which makes me half poster child and keeps me half flower child.

I accept full responsibility for my SCI. Society owes me nothing. I am able to stand on my own two feet. During all these years, I’ve lived independently, alone in a house in the woods. Those woods comprise a nature preserve where hunting is banned, but along whose shores duck hunting in the river was legal.

Before my injury, I participated in the outdoor sport of scaring away ducks from flying within range of shotguns. After rehab, I returned home in time to hear the shotgun blasts heralding duck hunting season. Seated in my wheelchair, I swore that next year I’d get out there to compete against the duck hunters again. And I did, but with crutches, and with one surprise. I was arrested for hunter harassment. The newspaper stories about my heinous crime could have been headlined, “Lone Cripple with Crutches Arrested for Harassing Four Hunters with Guns,” but their titles were more diplomatic. The newspaper reports generated public support. Long dismayed about duck hunting on the shoreline of the nature preserve, advocates wrote letters, made phone calls, signed petitions, attended hearings. Our state legislator was enlisted, and state wildlife staffers made a field trip to the crime scene. By next season, the waterways along the nature preserve in which I live were banned to duck hunting.

A born-again pedestrian, I’ve resumed all my other previous vocations and avocations, including nature photography. The world I now photograph, however, has narrowed in focus. I photograph mostly my backyard. And sometimes, my front yard. One recurring theme is “Seasons in Sequence” in which I return to the same site during different times of day and on different days. Every year, I scout out and set up a new shoot spot. This enables me to view nature more clearly, or at least more comfortably. I clear a path so I can navigate in my wheelchair, or so I won’t stumble with my crutches. I set up shop, and then just sit. I wait for birds to sing, or clouds to lift, or wind to settle, or thoughts to crystallize. Some evenings, I shoot the breeze. Many mornings, I shoot the sunrise.

“Deer Family Photos” is a recent theme. In 2001, I plotted to lure deer with food, and then to shoot them. Yet, if I simply appeared at my window from 150 feet away, they’d spook and head for the hills. Slowly, slowly, I earned their trust. In early May, one very pregnant and very hungry doe lingered long enough for me to shoot the first of her family photos. By August, I could shoot her and her fawns from 100 feet away. By October, fifty feet away. By spring 2002, I could shoot the yearlings from fifteen feet away. Those peaceful evenings I shared seated among the deer were in sum the most spiritually enriching experience of my life. The endeavor needed much planning and patience. It also required approximately fifty bushels of cracked corn and exactly one wheelchair. The wheelchair is pivotal. Deer recognize me from a mile away. Seated, I’m their height, and so less intimidating. Indeed, I could not have entered into this communion afoot. I could attain it only in a wheelchair.

A wheelchair, however, hampers access elsewhere, for instance to the site of my injury. Yet I’ve managed to bridge that gap three times. People ask me, Why would I wish to return to a place of such bad memories? I instruct them that, precisely by being able to return, I transform my memory of that place into a good one. I crutched and, where necessary, crawled the steep one mile trail down to (and back up from!) that fateful footbridge. Because it was there. Because I wasn’t. And because I may be crippled, but I ain’t dead.

What’s next? What’s more challenging than being paraplegic for the rest of one’s life? I suppose being paraplegic for the rest of one’s life, and living to be 100. When I reach 101, then what? Dunno. I’ll dive off that bridge when I come to it.

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