Discoveries

One of the awesome things about living on the mountain is all the wildlife.

We've had bears, deer, even moose.

It's been super fun and exciting.

Anyway, a few months back, I decided to try a new route for our morning walks.

It was just lovely. It wandered down the mountain and into some real "wilderness," which the kids just loved.

As we explored, we came to a sloping hill. It was rocky and since the awesome bike trailer of magicalness can only do as much as its driver, I decided this would be a good place to turn around.

Suddenly I heard a gasp from one of the littles.

"LOOK!" came the astounded and morbidly entertained exclamation. "BONES."

Sure enough, there were some deer bones off to the side, picked clean and bleached from the sun.

The kids examined them for some time before I had to tear them away from their discovery.

The next day, Eva came up to me, the others behind her. She looked up at me in complete solemnity, her eye twitching involuntarily.

"Mommy?" She asked. "Can we go to...The Bones?"

The other children whispered in chorusing chant, "The bones...walk to the bones..."

Worked for me. It was exactly one mile from the house to the bones, and that made for a nice, tidy walk.

Kind of eerily serendipitous, now that I think about it....

A few weeks later, some other deer fell victim to a speeding vehicle, its limp, fuzzy body placed in the weeds to the side of the road. He looked fresh, and as we passed by, Eva said, "Aww! He's sleeping..."

"Uh, I don't think he's sleeping, Eva..." I replied, quickly walking by.

This whole thing sparked conversation about deer afterlife, and we're all pretty sure that the deer went to heaven.

Or maybe he is haunting my children. I dunno.