Through the Eyes of Timber

Through the eyes of Timber I found an unchanging eternal light. I viewed the world in such a curiously forgiving way, that I no longer found disheartenment in its flaws. Gone were the laws of man and here was the ease of nature. Timeless and enlightening. I will forever live untamed.

July 21st, 1925

The city smog had been poisoning my mindset. Or at least that’s what Dr.Whitlock told my parents.

He sat sunken down into the depths of his auburn leather desk chair, with worse for wear-gold ocular frames resting on the tip of his nose. He was peering down at the notes he’d scrawled onto a clipboard, telling my parents what they were meant to do with me. As if the ink on his page knew me better than I knew myself. As if I wasn’t sitting beside them witnessing the entire event transpire.

“There’s an overwhelming cluster of other people’s energies that is traveling in through the breath and getting trapped inside her body. Perhaps, she would be more suited for a less populated area. It may do her well to recharge for awhile. Away from the hubbub of your lives. Breathe in some fresh, unpolluted air. Alone.”

My ears enlivened at the last word he had spoken and my spine straightened like a pine needle in my uncomfortable chair.

Alone? Alone is something that I’ve never quite been. It’s a concept I’ve always day dreamed about and hoped to be apart of my future. But of course my day dreams would always be interrupted by my mother summoning me from the library to have Anita measure my inseam for the umpteenth time. All for the makings of some entirely too frilly ballgown, probably fuchsia, that I would be forced to wear to my parents next auction.

But, Alone? Alone sounded quite pleasant. Extraordinary actually. I was simply tickled pink at the mere thought.

I think I looked smitten with life for the entire backseat ride from Locust to Ginger Blue. Sitting beside a pea-green trunk full of my clothing and literature.

Even Mr.Belvedere kept studying me strangely through my reflection in his rear view mirror. I suppose after driving me around for two-thirds of my life, he hadn’t seen me in such a joyous mood since I was a small child.

But joy I felt, when we pulled up to the wonderful cottage that would be my home for the next three months. For that is the longest time slot that my parents would agree to.

The driveway was aligned and covered by a canopy of flourishing sycamore trees, the gravel road winding up in an unusual way to end at the cozy chalet of my late great-grandmother.

It was stacked of stones in different shades of tan and grey, with half of it engulfed entirely by creeping ivy. It had three white lattice windows in varying sizes tucked between the stonework and a large forest green door that looked like it was crafted by one of the troll garden statues that hid between the leaves of the front shrubs. It was the most welcoming home I had ever seen.

There was much overgrowth where a neatly kept garden used to lie, but I found the untamed greenery much more magical then the gardens that mother oversaw back home. I have never taken to places where everything has to be just so.

Here, the flowers and vines grow in whichever direction they feel that they want to. Freethinking and wild, just like my caged heart has always yearned to be.

I didn’t know when I arrived that I would have company, but of course that is always how enchanted moments come about. You can never plan these things, nor can you seek them out. They float into your life when it’s just past dreary and illuminate your bones until you come back to yourself. Like the moon calling out to an ancient sea.

It was the evening of my fourth day at the cottage when I heard the initial sound. I was in the field out back picking some wild thyme around sunset when it happened. A roaring noise, almost like a sudden boom of thunder, coming from the derelict once-red barn at the end of the clearing startled me from my meditations.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have gone to inspect the cause of the ruckus if it hadn’t been for the cry of something in pain following shortly after the crash. It sounded eerily human, but also somewhat inhuman. It brought to life a protective instinct from inside me that I didn’t even know I had. I can’t recall any other time that I’ve ever ran so fast.

When I got to the structure I paused for a moment, taking in the sight of overgrown grass, collapsed beams and a sliding barn door that was buried partly into the ground with only a narrow triangular opening that I could wedge myself through.

I tried peering in to find the cause of the yelp but with the sunlight still around, the inside seemed almost pitch black. So, after I heard another whimper, I climbed through splintered wood and spider webs to reach the other side.

After taking a moment or two to allow my eyes to adjust to the dark, I could make out my surroundings and began searching for any signs of distress.

That’s when I heard it again, a very faint whine. It was coming from the far left corner of the barn. So I quickly began climbing over rotten hay bails and beams that were once on the ceiling but now lay in tangled piles on the dusty floor, in the direction of the sound.

When I first laid eyes on him my heart squeezed in my chest so tight you would have thought there was a fist around it.

A weathered hole in the roof allowed for a beam of light to shine through, falling directly onto him like the Earth’s ethereal version of a flashing ‘this way’ sign.

A tiny fawn, no more than three weeks old, lay stuck under a toppled piece of timber that had fallen from the ceiling. When he finally caught sight of me, he did not cower away in doubt of my intentions. He simply stared at me with hope as I fought the predacious wood for a moment before wriggling him into the safety of my arms.

“It’s okay little one. You are safe now.” I had assured him.

From the start, it was as though Timber and I had some sort of celestial understanding between one another. Every time I spoke to him, it always seemed as if I could hear him answer back.

We waited three days, but his mother never came looking for him. I think I was more disappointed then he. I had hope that she would return and he could fall back between the forest trees where he belonged, but I think Timber already knew something that I didn’t. He had known that his mother wouldn’t come, not because she didn’t want to, but because she couldn’t. That somber conclusion was the only one that I could come to.

Timber slept at the foot of my bed, laying in the candle lit darkness with the hodgepodge cast I spent hours crafting on his broken leg. I read him Robert Frost poems every night before rest, although I was always sure he’d wake me again in just a few hours to eat. He seemed to enjoy Frost much better than Dickens.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.” I whispered down to him in admiration from behind the bind of papers in my grasp.

I loved to watch his raven black eyes gleam up at me in amazement as each word spilled out of my mouth. His fragile body, covered in darling cream spots curled up against my feet.

This creature, so innocent and pure, so helpless but so filled with life. I felt like for the first time in my existence, that someone needed me. And I needed him.

We’d spend our mornings draped in golden sunlight out in the back yard. I’d sit between lengthy stalks of wildflowers and herbs while I surveilled him wobbling through the greenery as his leg slowly healed.

It was irreplaceable, the chance I had, to watch his body grow stronger by the day and his psyche to gain more spirit with every passing hour. Not before long, we’d crawl through the tall blades of grass, chasing Monarchs and listening to the howls of the wind, his leg without a cast.

What a curious being was Timber. His knowing filled to the brim with innocent wonder. To see each element of this world, that had been long stale to me, through the eyes of something seeing it for the first time was quite renewing.

He had forgiven the old barn, far before I had even thought to. But that was the type of soul that he was, a deer does not know how to hold a grudge. He’d prance in circles around it at dusk, following gallivanting toads along its border.

In the months that went by, I cherished every moment I spent with the young fawn. He had taught me that happiness existed in existence. In simply being alive.

Heartbreaking was that dreadful day when Mr.Belvedere pulled up outside the cottage in his shaded black Bentley. I had pleaded with mother on the phone, to stay longer, to bring him back with me. But she knew better than I, with my selfish emotions mucking up my brain, that he belonged here, amongst the forest and his kind.

I had spent the remainder of my days with Timber, making sure that he was able to make it out there on his own. He’d began to find food by himself and in the last few days he’d slowly stopped sleeping at the foot of my bed.

I’d hugged him gently around his neck and placed a kiss onto his forehead when we parted. Then, like he understood exactly what was happening, he’d turned around and trotted off into the trees, as he’d never done before. Not an ounce of resentment in what I felt was me abandoning him. It made my heart feel a bit lighter as I stared back at the woods surrounding the house from out the window of the car, silent tears cascading down my cheeks.

October 11th, 1930

Five years have passed now and I have returned to the cottage once more. My overwhelmed mind was in need of a similar escape that I had taken in my past.

Although, I have never again felt the sorrow that I had about life before my original visit to this place. Before Timber.

The first morning after my arrival, I am out in the meadow, sitting in the golden sunlight with my eyes clasped shut. Listening to the rustle of the trees when I hear the crunch of a fallen leaf under weight. Then another.

When I open my eyes back up I am staring into the raven ones of a magnificent buck. His coat burly and beige, his body strong, his antlers shooting up towards the sky in wicked points. He is studying me in curiosity from about ten feet away, with his hooves digging into the brown soil between thick grass as he sniffs the air.

Suddenly, a glint of knowing light flashes through his obsidian black eyes.

Then he runs to me.