Enclosure

There are a few images I am always tempted to keep for myself, not because I am reluctant to share them, but because the memories they evoke are magical, incandescent and very difficult to describe in a blog post.

Here and there in our woods in the Lanark Highlands are winter deer enclosures, protected areas which are secluded, usually a little higher up and ringed by cedars. The enclosures are safe places for the deer in winter, or at least, safer than the open fields where the snow is deep and movement away from predators would be almost impossible. From their comfortable winter deer yards, the deer can see anyone and anything which approaches, they are sheltered and out of the icy wind, and there is abundant cedar to forage for food.

Northern cedar browse forms the bulk of a deer's winter diet, and we supplement it with a mixture of deer pellets, corn and oats, dragging the food up the various trails on toboggans (very good exercise). My birthday present to myself last December was several hundredweight of winter deer feed and a good set of secateurs for cutting cedar browse for them.

Snug in their winter homes, the deer can hear and see me dragging their nosh up the trail, and they wait patiently for me, having renounced their fear of this old hen a long time ago. No matter how cold the day is, there is something wondrous and heartwarming about rounding the last curve and finding the deer waiting for me - it feels like community.