follow the leader

September is here.  (Did you know September is leukemia and lymphoma awareness month?)  You can see it in the angle of the sun and in the flowers blooming along the trail; the summer wildflowers have been replaced by the orange and yellow tiny touch-me-nots.  You can see it in the birds — the fledglings are flying strong and sure now, and some of the early migraters like the tiny blue Indigo buntings have already departed south.  And you can see it in the rapidly dwindling amount of daylight.

I love September; I love the cool nights that set up beautiful mornings for running, with pink and red and orange sunrises.  I love the warm days and the brightness of an impossibly blue sky.

Runs tend to blend together after awhile; a few are memorable (some for all the right reasons and some, unfortunately, for all the wrong ones), but most sort of fade into a collective experience.  There are runs that stick with you, though.  I think today was one of those runs.

It wasn’t particularly memorable because it was such a great run; I’d consider it a decent run, a little slower than normal pace, comfortable, and finished at a decent clip.  No, what made this run memorable is what I saw.

Despite the slightly slower pace, the miles were clipping by at a steady rate.  It is funny how some days it feels like the miles go by so slowly that time stands still, whereas other days the miles clip by like today as though time has warped forward.  In the grayish light that marks the twilight right before dawn, I turned into the valley and down onto the dirt bridle trail.  Half a mile into the bridle trail stretch, coming around a bend through the woods, I spotted him.

A buck.  Not the partly white “ghost deer” buck that is seen infrequently, but rather a healthy, stout brown buck, with black hooves and white tufts above them.  He sported a set of formidable antlers.  He stared at me with a sort of intense curiosity — not really afraid, yet also ready to run if necessary.

He was a handsome buck, one of the best looking bucks I have ever seen.

Deer are very common here.  Does with rapidly growing fawns tend to come up the steep hills of the valley to destroy flowers, trees, anything green and somewhat edible.  The bucks are rare, though.  They are shy, secretive, and aloof.  Seeing a buck is a treat.  What happened next was amazing.

As I approached, still clipping along at a steady pace, the buck took off and trotted down the trail.  He stopped, and looked back at me.  When I approached again, he trotted a little further down the trail, head held high and proud.  He then stopped and stared back at me once more.  For half a mile we played follow the leader, until he finally spotted something more interesting and took off crashing through the underbrush and into the dense tangle of green and brown woods.

I have run many, many miles in my lifetime, but never has the opportunity to play follow the leader with a buck presented itself.  I suppose that is part of the draw and part of what keeps me a runner — knowing no matter how many miles I run, the chance to experience something new and special and different always still exists.

Playing follow the leader with a buck.  Who would have thought.

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