I can get heavy in the head. It feels a bit like spiritual sluggishness, a dullness of the sparkly life force of vitality. It’s not a feeling of depression and it’s not irritability, it’s a lack of fire, a lack of spark. I hate it.

Four years ago, Dan and I went river rafting in Cataract Canyon. On our third night, we made camp on an island where the river split. As our guide made dinner, I walked into the water to rinse and relax and generally take in the spectacular creativity of nature’s history book, hundreds of years carved into the canyon walls, all lit up by the deep orange sunset, stunning in it’s uniqueness and unfamiliarity. Tricky thing is, in my happy reverie I drifted down stream a bit from where I entered. Not much, fifty yards or so, but those fifty yards changed the bank from sand to deep deep mud. As I started up the bank, I felt the mud suck at my feet. I thought it would get better as I got higher, away from the water. I was wrong. The further I went, the deeper the mud became until the dark wet brownness sucked at my calves. I was not happy. I didn’t know what was in the mud. And I definitely didn’t like the sinking feeling of not having solid ground under foot, nor the increasing thickness of the mud that refused to release my feet, then ankles, then legs. That’s when I panicked. And the frogs started. Every time I freed one foot from the mud, I unearthed dozens of tiny frogs. As the mud got deeper, and thicker, I needed my hands to push myself up, away from the goop engulfing me. But the frogs. Everyplace I put my hands, I seemed to be squishing frogs.

I’ll admit, I screamed. I panicked and screamed and kicked and fought while frogs frantically jumped all around me, over me, on me. Dan heard my screams and came running. I don’t scream often. I fought myself free, leaving one of my river shoes stuck deep in the mud just as Dan arrived.

“What happened? Where is your shoe?” He was half amused now that he could see I was ok.

“The mud, and then there were frogs.” I was out of breath.  “I’m not going back.” I hugged him. “Fuck it, they can have my shoe.” Dan laughed.

“I’ll get it.” My knight. Never thought I needed one, but I seriously love having one.

As I watched my husband wade into the mud in a sea of jumping critters, the frogs seemed quite cute. From twenty yards away. They were already calming down now that the giant panicking human that had unearthed them from their cool cozy home and disrupted their peace was gone. And despite my pure panic just minutes before, I laughed. They really were tiny cute little things when there weren’t hundreds of them all around me, jumping on me, jumping at me, bouncing off me mid-flight. I laughed and laughed. And then had to listen to the story of the sheer panicking screams being told over and over again, reminding me to laugh at myself and my eclectic stew of human traits.

I’ve tired to discern a pattern to the heaviness in the head I sometimes feel. It usually lasts an hour, sometimes a day, very rarely more.  It usually happens once a month or once every few months. Sometimes, like today, I know it’s a combination of a natural letdown after a busy weekend colliding with my general inclination to want solitude to replenish. Most of the time solitude works. Every once in awhile for some indiscernible reason, the solitude backfires into loneliness. I’m okay with that now. It’s an hour, a morning, a day. I know it will pass. And I’ll appreciate the contrast my heavy head provides when I get all sparkly and alive again. I can even celebrate the full range of human emotions in the midst of a heavy head moment. It’s ok. Truly, it is.

And that would be it.   That’s enough. To know that I’ll be ok, not to panic at the heaviness or the mud, but  just to let it pass. But over the past year, really since my Gram passed away, every single time I get a heavy head moment, a deer has arrived. And when I say every time, I mean: Every. Time. Sometimes they are by the side of the road when I drive down our driveway. Sometimes they are down by the cows at the foot of the canyon. Often times, they are in the woods behind the barn and my office. Last month, as I walked from the house to my office in the barn, I was stewing about a babysitter situation when I practically tripped on a deer and her little one.  I was fifteen yards away when I looked up. She was standing still, looking at me. Her little one was in the woods to my right.  I looked back at the momma.  Neither of us broke the moment for what seemed like minutes.  Until I laughed out loud.  Her message was so loud and so clear, I couldn’t help myself.

Today, one hour ago, a single deer walked past my office window. She was pure grace and delicate motion and attentiveness, alive with intuition and instinct and awareness, yet gentle and light on her long thin legs. I watched her eat some of the grass by our pasture, I watched her walk through the gate, I watched her hang out in the cool shade of the firs. And then she was gone. Today, like every time I’ve seen the deer in the last year, the words came to me, Walk Lightly. Walk lightly on this earth, walk lightly with yourself, walk lightly with others. Walk lightly.

I used to think deer were such simple animals. Boring almost, compared to the moose we see, the fox, the elusive white ferrets, and the occasional sheep. Mostly what I thought were deer could be dangerous while driving. Those concepts of deer have been obliterated in the last year. Now I see them as sensitive fairies almost, with some strange ability to bring the healing nature of the forest to us, to connect us gently and delicately to their forest home. Sure, some people think they ruin their gardens, some think they are a nuisance. I hear it all the time. And now when I do, I can’t help but think to myself, those people aren’t listening. Just as I once didn’t listen.

Now the deer remind me to walk lightly.  Just as the frogs playfully jumped out of the mud to remind me to laugh. Deer. Somehow, their delicate, gentle, yet determined way of being removes the spiritual weight, the heaviness, and returns me to the wonderful playground of life. Those little gentle animals remind me to delight in the strange and magical process of living playfully in the world.  And to walk lightly.