Quick note: For Slate, I wrote about AA, the attention/influencer economy, and anonymity. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.
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I can’t meditate. I’ve tried. I’ve tried classes and apps; I’ve tried under the guidance of a therapist and every flavor of hippie on the planet. And before you tell me ‘there’s no wrong way to meditate,’ I promise there is, and I’ve done it.
As a health journalist with a smorgasbord of mental health disorders for which meditation is supposed to be helpful, it’s a real bummer. A robust body of research suggests mindfulness meditation is helpful for symptoms of depression, anxiety, ADHD, and can support relapse prevention in people with alcohol and other substance use disorders.
As someone who was (and remains) agnostic, when I first got to AA, I naturally gravitated toward the meditation part of the “prayer and meditation” step. It seemed more in line with my hippieish ‘nature is my higher power’ thing. Very soon, however, I was all about prayer. I didn’t believe a personified, omnipresent entity was listening to me; it’s just that prayer was something I could do. I could act as though my higher power was listening, say the words, and hope for the best.
When I try to meditate, my mind immediately fractures and goes in a billion different directions. While I’m paying attention to my breath and the feeling of my diaphragm expanding and contracting, I’m also thinking about work problems, financial problems, and how I’m supposed to be focusing on my breath and isn’t it weird how I can count my breaths while mentally being also all the way down 15 other mental rabbit holes and oh my god, how long do I have to sit here; am I allowed to stop if I have to pee because I’m pretty sure I have to pee and I hate absolutely everything about this; why am I more anxious than when I started and is it time for Jeopardy yet?
Listen, I know that’s part of it. I know that the whole point is to non judgmentally watch my thoughts float by like dandelion spores in the wind. I know that I’m supposed to breathe through the discomfort because it’s temporary. I know that the fact that I find meditation so challenging is a sign of how badly my brain needs it. I also know that when it comes to meditation, my brain laughs in the face of its so-called needs.
Fortunately, I have deer living in my yard. What do deer have to do with meditation, you ask? Nothing. Or everything.
If meditation is an exercise in quieting one’s mind, focusing on the present moment, breathing through discomfort, and fostering a sense of inner peace, these deer have done more for me than every guided meditation app on the planet.
I know people with beautiful flower gardens who loathe deer and their tendency to eat expensive plants, but that is not my life. I live in rural Washington on two acres of overgrown grass and untrimmed trees. Running through it is a small creek. Rather than deer destroying the beauty of my yard, it is the deer that make my yard beautiful.
Our most consistent inhabitants this year are a doe and her two fawns. There is a smattering of other deer that saunter through, but this little family of three has been with us since late spring. They’re not here all the time. They wander or hide during the day, typically emerging only in the mornings and evenings. It’s a temporary and thus bittersweet joy—in a few months, they’ll be gone, and I can only hope at least one of them will return next spring.
I love watching these graceful, goofy creatures. We have strategically placed deer cameras around the yard, but my purest delight comes from sitting outside and admiring them as they roam. I’ve watched the fawns grow and learn which plants are safe to eat by watching mom nibble on them first. I only caught glimpses of them nursing, but I had a front row seat to an exasperated mom letting her kids know their suckling days were over.
I also learned that the mom was not interested in having a stray cat in her territory.
All summer, I watched as the two fawns developed, if not their own personalities, at least their own habits. One seems to be more cautious, following closely behind the doe, while her sibling lags, wandering lazily behind. If mom doesn’t realize that the slowpoke is slowpoking, the sibling will wait patiently until her wandering brother* realizes he’s getting left behind and comes bounding across the yard to catch up.
I watch the fawns play and fight, and look to each other for cues and sniff their way back to each other when lost. I watch it all and feel so, so lucky. Lucky to be able to provide a habitat for them, at least for a little while. Lucky that they allow me to marvel at them without seeing me as a threat.
As anyone who has tried to befriend a deer knows, they are skittish creatures. They are familiar enough with me that they’re mostly bored by my presence, but if I move too fast, make too much noise, or do something unexpected, they’ll take off before I’ve even realized my offense. Thus, the best approach to prolonged viewing—and I like to engage in as much deer voyeurism as possible—is an exercise in tightly controlled movement and sound.
Every morning and evening, I go outside as quietly as possible and scan the areas they visit most often. My eyes dart across the thicket of blackberry and the long, heavy limbs of willow trees, looking for a rustle of leaves or dark, blinking eyes behind the snarled undergrowth.
But mostly, I wait. Being quiet and still sounds easy, and sometimes it is. A lot of times it’s not. I am a nature lover, but in many ways, this love is unrequited. I’m wildly allergic to grass (and like 50 other plants in my yard), and if a bug can bite, there is a 100% chance it will find me and go to town. For no discernible reason, these bites almost always swell to the size of Easter eggs.
So being outside is not necessarily comfortable, but it is, on the whole, calming.
I don’t always see the deer, but anytime I do, it feels like magic. I stop what I’m doing. I take a few deep breaths. Then, I focus—not on what I need to get done or when my car insurance payment is due—but on these creatures that have chosen to show up in my overgrown yard to make a temporary but meaningful home. They are so quiet, so attuned to their environment, so incongruously graceful and vigilant, so playful and shy that I can’t help but be fascinated and delighted by them. Even the way they pucker their mouths to try to reach fruit on trees just out of reach brings me joy.
When I come in from these mini excursions, I feel calm, appreciative, and content. The way I assume people who meditate do after sitting on that little cushion. I don’t know if it has all the benefits of “real” meditation, but I know it’s given me something pretty damn close.
For anyone who feels like they might need more deer in their life, I put together a little video of “my” deer doing deer things.
*I don’t actually know the sex of the fawns; I can barely tell deer species apart, much less distinguish a brother from a sister.
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I love deer and love that your videos captured their family goofiness. We need goofy all day long. I'm with you on the inability to meditate (even when I do yoga I am 5 seconds in and completely over the pose I'm supposed to be holding for 60 seconds). We recently adopted another dog and Marley calls him the Humble Ponderer because he sits and just stares out at the yard. So I found the way to meditate: I watch Ray do it.
Your piece provided a calmness my morning was missing, wisdom (as always), and wonderful videos. Thank you for everything that you do.