This morning I was back in the forest. Working a night shift the previous day meant I arrived home early in the morning and it was an ideal time to keep going and just head out after getting changed.

Arriving fairly tired, I decided to find a spot to just sit down and absorb all I could hear and see around me.

I found a natural cosy little den to sit and watch the wildlife all around me. At one point, I thought a deer was going to walk right up to me. I stayed as still and quiet as I could and tried to control my breathing. The deer spotted me at the last minute. I looked it in the eye. It looked right back at me. It was a bit of weird situation and I couldn’t quite work out what I saw in the deer’s eyes. Was it confused I was there? Did it fear me? Or was I simply a curiosity it was checking out? I couldn’t say for sure. But for a second, just a split second, there seemed to be some sort of two-way exchange between us.

As soon as I started to slowly reach for my camera, the deer was away. I had triggered its flight response.

Disappointed, I cursed to myself that I had not got the picture of me being face-to-face with a deer. Yet I do get to treasure that moment. The moment me and that deer ‘communicated’ in the forest.