The Unseen World

I have seen so many deer up close and personal here in Williamson County, Tennessee, one would think the sight would have lost its magic. It simply has not. The sight of the beautiful, graceful creatures is as appealing in an urban landscape, where it takes my breath away to see something so large, and yet so wild and gorgeous, tipping around in our man-made world full of exhaust fumes and Blackberry phones as it does to see them feeding in a cluster on a gently rolling Tennessee hillside. So it wasn't very odd for me to look up the exact hour that the sun should be setting last Sunday, pack up my camera, and ask my husband to go for a deer-appreciation tour (can't call it a "deer-sighting" tour, because that would imply that we might not see some, and I nearly ALWAYS do).A tiny bit past our subdivision, we turned onto Royal Oaks (the worst speed trap in town, but that is a story for another day), a short four-lane road lined with office complexes and turnoffs for two subdivisions. Just before the turnoff for Home Depot, three deer were feeding in the limited cover off to the right. My expedition was successful before it had even begun, yet God had much more in store for my road-weary heart. We headed off in the direction of Arno Road, sailed on through the countryside past Page Middle School, where my youngest child is a sixth-grade student. As we passed under 840, I had the feeling the tour was not over, though I would have been happy with what we had already seen. Sure enough, a mile or two down the road, I gasped out loud. To my right I saw eight deer grazing in a field. My husband noticed the ninth one, who was on the fringe. She was a snow white albino. We pulled into someone's long, winding driveway and I pointed my camera at her at a range that would have yielded an excellent photo. "No SD Card" was the message that popped up. I later discovered that the card was in there, just not fully engaged. My husband took some shaky, blurry video with our old-fashioned video camera. To say I drove home excited is an enormous understatement. According to sources I found on the internet, only one in every 30,000 whitetail deer are born albino. I went back Monday night at dusk and saw her again. I trespassed again, this time boldly driving halfway up another gravel drive, the owner looking at me from the back of his tractor as I popped out and took photos of the doe. She eyed me warily from her cover. My photos were terrible. My lens did not magnify enough and I did not hold the camera steady enough. Tuesday morning dawned in a gauzy, foggy haze. I knew I would see her again, and I did, in the same area. As I drove away from the albino doe, my heart overflowing with the wonders of nature, I hoped God was not finished showing me his hidden world. Coming down Lewisburg Pike in heavy, fast-moving traffic, I saw a large coyote in the big, open field behind Sullivan Farms, an 800-plus home development in Franklin. He was bouncing up and down on his prey, which was unseen. I swerved into the mouth of another subdivision opposite him and crossed the busy highway with my camera in one hand and my cell in the other, my sister on speaker hollering "What on earth?!?" I took his picture several times, his yellow eyes trained on me cautiously. After scurrying back across the highway, dodging on-coming cars from both directions, I got back into my car and headed into Sullivan Farms. The coyote headed up the hill toward the subdivision. He was on a small ridge just above the sidewalk at the front of the neighborhood and I got out again. We locked eyes again as I snapped his picture several times. He started to trot away from me. I drove into the first street he would come to and took his picture as he started to run across the street in front of me, toward a row of homes. I pulled out, hit the main neighborhood parkway and pulled into the next street. He looked at me again and took off behind a home and into a creek bed. In my 43 years of life, I have only seen a coyote up close two times. The only other time was about five years ago, in the same neighborhood. A large coyote ran across the street in front of my headlights. He, like the one I saw yesterday, was larger than I expected a coyote to be. I hear the local coyote packs howling at night, have heard them for years. But the sight of one in the daytime is a rare, special treasure for nature lovers like me. It was like, on three consecutive days, God opened a window into his beautiful, intricate, hidden natural world and let me look in. With the onset of winter, a season in which I usually suffer so terribly with depression, I may just have found my way of escape from the sadness that normally envelops me. There is another window that I plan to look through this winter. That is the window into the unseen world of the supernatural, which is opened only to those with a close connection to God through Jesus Christ. "Postcards from heaven," my term for events which I know are messages to me from God, are frequent occurrences when I am walking in repentance and open gratitude and humility. This will be my most effective defense against discouragement and despair this winter season.