The Deer Crossing

Chapter 1: Watching the Wheel

The Deer Crossing

Book 1: The Ramble

Chapter 1: Watching the Wheel

Straight overhead was a light blue. Framed by the green of the high treetops and their strong woody branches, the streaks of the thin clouds move from somewhere behind to somewhere else. The sun was barely hidden behind the wisps, its waning energies diffused to a soft orange, able to be seen, yet only suggestions of the power from which it came. This was a beautiful sunset, but beautiful to someone else. This one was painted for another man, not Gordie.

Below that celestial painting was an outcropping of eroded rock on top of a seemingly inconsequential hill. This was not the highest hill in the region, nor did it have any other fantastic features. The forest receded back from its ledge some twenty paces. And this last leg of the pilgrimage to adulthood had been made by Gordie a few hours previous. Three nights ago he had left his most recent home. He set out to, as the community called it, Watch the Wheel. It's a passage to adulthood, like many cultures have. A young man is ready to cast off his youth and move to independence, and he does it through an effort and a journey. Each young man is sent to the far river and to this very rock ledge. That's it. It's simple. Just go there. And the journey will take care of everything else.

Gordie looked out over the river below. He was not to go any further than this. Once the river was crossed, no one came back. The river was wide, but not forbidding. The water ran swift, but not dangerous. It extended to the horizon on the south, meandering softly, but its valley evident in the foliage that surrounded it. To the North, only young eyes could make out a bend to the east at a place where a soft crick tumbled into the current from the hill on the western shore. The waters tumbled down the granite formations upon which the same ledge was formed. At a fair distance, he saw a disturbance in the river. A dark dot with a vee of wake pulling back from it. The ripples catching the oranges of the sky on one side and the dark shadow of the disappearing sun on the other. Slowly lurching, quietly progressing, this far off speck was headed for the eastern bank. It took a few moments to reach the muddy bank, but as he strained, Gordie could make out the suggestion that an animal was emerging. Thin legs pierced the soggy shore, yet still moving forward. It emerged, and after a few mighty leaps made its way up into the brush, climbing the rather steep embankment, its color melding with the woods until it disappeared from all sight.

Gordie was alone again, no living creatures to be seen or heard. There was a shake of a plot of blueberry bushes, a whistle of breeze above. And loneliness.

After the ordeal of the last couple of days, Gordie tried to remember how he found himself at this very spot. The spiritual father, the Bally, being sent on this journey, to watch the wheel – whatever that meant.

Watching the Wheel was an ancient tradition. It was not reserved for a family, a class or a particular people. It was a lesson that was handed on to each generation by the storytellers and the singers. Its creation may have been known, but it was irrelevant. What mattered was the way that each man came back changed, and how his heart was groomed for a yearning for a greater life. The storytellers and singers wrote about the past generations that returned with a fire in their eyes, a strength in their legs. They sang about hearts that beat loud enough to implant courage in the whole community.

It was not remembered how this pilgrimage got its name. Some believed that it was forbidden to get to the ledge on carts or wagons, and wheels were not to be used. Some thought that the ancients saw the sun as a wheel, and that counting its number of transits was part of the journey. Most saw a deeper connection to life itself. Just as a newborn progresses to adulthood, there is an inexorable journey on both a linear and a circular path: and these are not contradictions. People are born, live and die. They grow, they whither, they disappear. They learn, the teach, they rest. These are the linear aspects of life. And these are external to the human soul. Souls move in circular patterns, even while those same cycles can ascend (or sadly descend). Immature souls learn, recognize their need for more, and then learn again. Each day they wake commune with Colluch, perfume their daily tasks, and end the day with thanking that same benevolent and providing deity. And each period of time is marked by its own vivifying cycle: the days of the week are dedicated to some task or other, the seasons of the year are a rolling wheel of festivals and disciplines. But why the journey to adulthood was called Watching the Wheel was a question that could only be answered by its completion and contemplation.

As he was sitting, and ruminating on all that had happened, on all he had learned, and on all that had gone wrong, he thought back to how this had all started. He thought back to the hope, the excitement, the wide-eyed promise: this was the only way he could begin to recover from his heinous betrayal.