Movement.

I'm about to leave the bench when I see her down the hill about 300 feet. She is slowly stepping the snow with her head hunched and white tail flickering. Her limbs blend with the limbs of the trees and for many moments she is still. 

A few feet behind her is her sibling. I can't tell the sex of either, but deem the first fawn a female because of her presence. She engulfs femininity in her delicate steps, her precise movements - the wiggle of her tail that looks like a feather duster when it shoots upright. She is a showstopper, a headturner -- something that draws you in for no other reason than pure beauty.

From my bench, I watch her movements, her stillness and her power to stop me in time. The other fawn, I automatically assume is a male. His steps are more rushed and seem clumsy -- not as delicate as his sister. 

It's silly of me to catagorize these attributes to the sexes. I have no idea, I just write their story in my head. I picture them running through the woods -- hopping between the branches bare. I picture them without us. I close my eyes and picture this horizon without the homes, without the interstate, without all this humanized rushed movement of going, going, going.

It's hard to picture this land without us. It is all I have ever known. Movement. Going. Sheltered.

It's hard to slow down in the midst of everything. 

But I do now. I close my eyes and listen.

The wind is moving briskly across the landscape, across my face. My cheeks are breeze rosed and exposed to the open air. The wind hits the trees and sends the branches into each other, causing a gentle drum to its song, and the trucks and cars of I-376 add chimes a low, baritone whoooosh, whooosh. The hum from the distant Squirrel Hill tunnel is the undertone to this song. If you listen, you can hear the vehicles exiting the tunnel and shooting into the open air highway. And to top it all off, the wind descends the gathered snow off the crying trees and when it hits the earth -- it sounds like all blink. 

I open my eyes and blink off the snow that gathered on its lashes and wipe my face. I look back to the deer. She is resting her frame on the path, her front legs tucked into her back legs. She is hugging into herself, probably maximizing her body heat and warmth. Her brother stands behind her -- a watch fawn in the day -- scanning the forest for any potential threat. 

Apacha does the same for me, quite lazily, behind the bench. There is a nice shade behind the bench from my shadow and the bench's shadow and his body mimics the fawn. His legs tucked into each other and his head plopped into the snow. His eyes are closed too, and his ears are perked up. It seems as if he is listening to the sound of day as well.

I stand up, and the fawn does too. She looks up to me, and I down to her. A meditative staring contest with no blinks, no smiles, just pure adoration in my part. I see now, that their mother is there with them, and I am surprised I did not see her before. Her frame almost double the frame of her fawns and they all look up to me, and I down to them. Apacha is up and alert now. 

These must be the deer that he chased through the woods on the way to the bench. 

We started out on our usual route to the bench - down the hill and along the treeline. We were about halfway to the bench, when Apacha took off into the woods. I chased after him, but his four legs trumped my two and he was made to prance through the woods. I stopped and watched him move, again a wild man in the wilderness. His coat camoflauged with the trunks of the trees and his limbs mingled with the branches. After a bit, he gave up and ran back to me, tongue hanging loose and a look of satisfaction in the chase. 

Two hikers with two dogs -- Bella and Getty, both poodle mixes -- appeared out the woods, off the path Apacha had just returned from. 

"He was after three deer. Two fawns and a momma," one of the guys said.

"He blends in with the woods. We watched the whole thing," the other said.

I asked about the trail, and they said it was beautiful and they all connect. They set off towards their cars and Apacha and I stepped into the woods. I figured we would do a c - curve around the backside of Frick and then hike up to the bench from the other direction. We followed the trail, and quickly it kept meeting with other trails, and Apacha and I kept taking lefts to attribute to the curve. The snow at some points was almost up to the top of my boot -- a good nine to ten inches. 

We climbed around for a bit, and I stopped on a path to look up, hoping to see the bench, but in reality, there would be no way to see it. The angle was too sharp and the bench sits back a couple of feet off the overlook, so the earth would block the view. So we kept moving and heading west. Apacha was getting tired and followed behind me, which is not a good sign for him. Usually he leads the way, sniffing out the trails and checking out the scene. Usually he has to sit and wait for me to catch up before he runs ahead again. 

But he is tired and he lingers behind. I almost get a little panicky, knowing these woods have miles and miles of trails, and my intuition could be off, and I could be leading us in the wrong direction on empty stomachs and no water (well there was plenty of snow to turn to, and Apacha did, quite often.) 

The minute I started to question myself was the minute we found the bigger path about 300 feet below the bench. I knew we were on the right track because we had hiked these trails in the fall around the first time I found the bench. 

I stopped and Apacha rested in the snow. He tucked his nose into its coldness and lapped some into his mouth. 

Thinking back now, we stopped in almost the same spot where I saw the fawns and the momma deer. We stopped to rest in the same proximity. I wonder if they smelled Apacha. I wonder if they stopped there to sniff us out. To scope out potential threats. Or if it was just the right spot to catch the afternoon sun on their coats and rest while the hunt for food continues.

From the bench, I see them, and they see me. I break our staring contest and walk away. After a couple of steps I stop and look back to her. She is still looking up to me. Wondering about my movements. It seems as if we are all questioning the movements. The breeze blows again, tangling the loose hair across my face where it gets stuck on my cheeks. I brush it off. The cars move on. The wind keeps going.

We all keep going. 

Stopping from time to time to feel the nice flirtation of the wind on the cheek.