The full moon ushered in the young year and an unexpected gift. Not a wrapped present strung with a fancy bow, but something memorable ahead of what felt like an ill-timed birthday. Maybe it was the full moon’s influence that woke me at exactly midnight. Or that I rose to simply quench a sleepy thirst.
Whatever the reason, I was awake for a chance encounter with the wild.
A large north-facing window above my kitchen sink framed a nighttime landscape just beyond reach. Not colored charcoal gray or inky black, the clear air on that winter night was the deep hue of a favorite childhood crayon, Midnight Blue.
In the distance to the west, the Wasatch Range brightly lit in moon shadow and cracked by Snake Creek, and Guardsman Pass was adorned in a white cape of brilliant snow. Miles away, it looked close enough to touch.
Directly overhead a lunar light filtered through naked branches of an enormous willow. Their shadows cast a filagreed pattern across thin layers of snow on frozen ground, reaching like outstretched fingers toward an aging crabapple tree.
That’s when I saw him.
Still as a marble statue, the male deer stood motionless, his multi-pronged rack mingled in tree branch shadows. The buck’s presence caught me by surprise.
I decided to secretly observe his nocturnal moves. Unlike the emaciated and starving mule deer that found their way to our valley during the history-making atmospheric river events two winters ago, the buck appeared healthy and strong, absent protruding ribs. While I watched him, the four points on each antler were reflecting the subtle rays of a lasting moon.
The wild stag resting less than 15 feet away remained in his dignified stance for some time. A neighbor suggested that maybe, like horses who sleep standing up, this deer had simply clicked out, too. I wondered if he was sleeping, resting or surviving in the still, safe haven of my back yard.
The midnight encounter with wild nature was rare but familiar as I remembered the lure and reward of winter night walks.
In an essay by natural historian Robert Macfarlane, his understanding of noctambulism, or night walking, is told in story. Reasons humans go for night walks, including in search of melancholy, attributes the meaning of noctambulism as sleep walking. However, Macfarlane writes about another reason for being out at night. It is “the wildness which the dark confers on even a mundane landscape. You become even more aware of landscape as a medley of effects, a mingling of geology, memory, movement, life.”
Sheltered snuggly indoors, I did not go out for a night walk and disturb the stately wild animal. Besides, it was really cold outside. Instead, I chose to recall the mingling effects of night walks in past winters.
I remembered a night walk in light snow shared with a girlfriend. We strolled through our alpine village enchanted by the glow of windows framing dressed Christmas trees inside humble historic homes. As we looked in from the wintery world outside that Christmas Eve, we moved steadily up Norfolk Avenue to arrive in time for Midnight Mass at St. Mary’s Church in Old Town Park City.
Winter night walks to the top of Midway’s Memorial Hill are among my cherished moments fused in memory. Enveloped in nature’s wild “medley of effects,” we have stood in awe, mesmerized by a full moon that floats in our night sky.
I won’t forget a winter night walk decades ago, before a chairlift linked to Jupiter Ridge, when we crossed the white face of a bold mountain on skinny skis with two dogs, heading to an old sheepherder’s hut in Red Pine Canyon for a night’s sleep on a high and distant wild mountain.
Eventually, the stag moved some. I refocused my attention on the present and watched as he lifted his snout toward a dangling bird feeder, shaking loose oily black sunflower seeds meant for avian friends.
His graceful neck arched under moonlight while nibbling respectfully at the fallen seeds. He wasn’t starving, but he was hungry and in need. Or maybe he ventured out for a night walk in search of “movement and life.”
Leslie Miller is the co-editor of “Reimagining A Place for the Wild” and a former, long-time resident of Park City who now lives in Midway.