HOME ON THE RANGE WHERE THE DEER PLAY

As my brother, Pete, stumbled downstairs a little after 4am to make the morning coffee, he looked out the window and saw how deep the recently-fallen snow was. It seemed like it was pitch black outside, but in fact a faint glow from the moon through the cloudy night sky illuminated the white falling powder. Instinctively, he wrapped himself in several layers and decided it was one of those winter moments he had to experience in his Range Rover.

He went to the garage, pulled the cover off the blue beast, nestled into the cockpit and turned the key. Backing out, with the glow of the moon, he wouldn’t even turn on the headlights for the short drive to Little Switzerland – a vantage point not too far away that is like looking out over the Alps, with steep hills and valleys. As he slowly creeped out of town without any other cars on the road, and too early for even the snow ploughs to be out, he quickly realised that the only living things sharing his nocturnal journey were some wild deer, who in some strange way were almost oblivious to him invading their morning hunt for food.

He turned onto a track and drove through the deepening snow. Almost miraculously, as he was moving effortlessly down the path, the deer were keeping pace with him like he was part of their small herd. What the heck was going on here?

He was actually running with the deer for about a mile until he saw that the terrain ahead was a bit too challenging, even for a Range Rover.

Finally, as the deer ran ahead, he turned around in a and slowly headed back to the road home. As he made it to town with the roads still unploughed, he pulled into his garage, turned off the engine and just sat there wondering if what he had just experienced had really happened: running with the deer through the hollows of Little Switzerland in the deep snow of an early morning in Grant County, Wisconsin. Crazy? Yep! But a Rover can do that to you. John Nordloh Wisconsin, USA