I am writing this letter to you during Fall equinox, the mid-point between the summer and winter solstices. Equinox is when night time and day time are approximately equal, depending on our latitude.

So far this fall has been a happy time for humans and critters alike. We usually associate fall with harvest time. Indeed the squash, corn, beans and other crops are ripening on their stalks and vines and we are enjoying the abundance that the garden is providing as it sighs a breath of relief from the summer heat and relaxes into the cooler fall weather.

The long days of summer are behind us and we can feel the winter ahead. The critters can feel the winter ahead too and they are preparing their bodies for the inevitable cold weather and scarce food.

The wild plants, deeply tuned into these rhythms, are doing their best to provide abundantly this time of year so that they can nourish and in turn be nourished. Food for reproduction. Life for life.

Our region is rich with native oak trees, one of the dominant tree species making up the ecology here. Last year was a mast year and the majority of bearing oak trees littered acorns everywhere.

Masting is an oak tree community’s collective ability to synchronize their nut production on the same year. Then they go through a few years without dropping many nuts.

The ebb and flow of acorns keeps acorn hungry mammal populations in check leading up to a mast year. That ensures that in mast years a decent number of seeds have a chance of going uneaten so that a good number of acorns can become future generations of oak trees.

The crest and trough of nut production affects bird, insect, rodent, deer and other mammal populations, which in turn affect predator populations. The oak trees are anchors for the greater ecosystem and they are so intricately woven into so many known and unknown living relationships above and below the soil.

Thank you oak trees, givers of life! Thank you oak trees for your great wisdom and steadfastness.

Sure enough this year I am seeing plenty of big acorns on one of the trees close to our home. The first nuts have been starting to fall, but the majority still cling to the branches waiting for the right time.

I decided not to harvest acorns this year since it is not a mast year—many of the trees are not producing. This one tree is making a good crop of nuts but it is doing so alone. It is an anomaly in a non-mast year, producing nuts when most of its relatives are not.

Surely this oak tree wants to nourish some critters this fall.

The oak tree knows what its doing. It is providing food when many of its oak kin are not. If any acorns are left by winter they will be devoured or stashed in a lucky cache.

The deer are eating the acorns. They hang out under the oak trees that do produce. They aren’t hanging out there just for shade any longer. We are no longer feeling those heat waves, which are now a memory in our bodies.

Deer know the winter is coming. The nuts are one of the best carbohydrates for putting on some fat and so they are starting to eat the nuts while they are here. And they’ll continue to do so as long as the nuts are available.

I bet they are still eating oak leaves, though I haven’t noticed them doing so in a while. The oak leaves are still dark green, despite putting so much energy into their nut production. But soon they will turn yellow and fall down.

We are in the in between. In between two worlds—hot and cold, light and dark, dry and wet.

In fact we’ve recently experienced a few late summer / early fall rains. The moisture that was released has mostly dried up, but here and there new green life is starting to poke its head above the soil. At some inevitable point the big fall showers will come and it will be cool enough that the ground will stay wet much longer.

Only then will we see the earth carpeted in green again. Only then will deer relax into eating the fresh green herbs and grass before the winter slowdown…

…before the so seeming stasis when the in breath and out breath feel like no breath at all.

For now the deer are still eating what tree forage they can find. When the deer are hanging out near riparian zones, such as river and creek edges, they are already enjoying plenty of fresh green grass tips along with their tree leaves.

Of course, our irrigated gardens and orchards continue to be riparian. Not a natural riparian, but a domesticated riparian zone. So the local matriarch is sure to lead her family of does and fawns around our garden on their daily stroll looking for the choice yummies we make available to them.

They love to nibble the leaves of our trees and shrubs when they have access. We’ve more or less wised up to the deer and protect most of our trees and shrubs that need protection.

In some cases the shrubs are outgrowing their protection. Deer are able to access their tender new growth and show us where we need to expand or reinforce our deer protection, or else be OK with slower plant growth.

And so the deer dilly dally in those spots a little longer. We are OK providing some food to the deer as long as the trees and shrubs aren’t set back too far in growth or production.

We recognize that a nibble here and there is good for the trees, good for us and good for the deer. The more abundant our gardens become, the more we are able to share without feeling damaged or hurt by their appetites.

And we are grateful for the deposits of fertility that deer leave in our gardens. Those slow release organic pellets seem to increase in frequency as our orchards become more desirable to the deer.

Some of our protected trees have hardly been looked at by the deer, while others have endured much more browsing. Each year we are planting new plants in the presence of the deer. And we are trying new ways of protecting them.

The deer are also telling us how desperate they are for food—and green water in the form of leaves—since our summers are so dry and moisture and diversity of food becomes more scarce.

As the season turns, moisture slowly, slowly starts to return (eventually it will be all at once)—the nuts are starting to drop (eventually they will rain down)—some new growth is returning after trees and shrubs come out from hunkering down from the heat (can you hear them sigh in relief?)—and a few new herbaceous seedlings slowly start to emerge in little niches (a green whisper, a soft promise).

The deer, in turn, are still interested in our garden and orchard plants before other significant food and moisture becomes available.

Yet many plants that “made it” through the season are starting to breath sighs of relief from drought/heat stress and deer browse. For the most part, the damage has been done where the damage has been done. The stems that have been eaten have been eaten.

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For the plants that are surviving, some have taken it in stride and flourish with the “right” amount of leaf and stem pruning facilitated by the deer. Others are hanging in there the best they can and we learn where we can offer them more help, if we’re not the tough love kinda gardeners.

And we’re living in between two worlds. In between trees having leaves and no leaves.

If the weather doesn’t turn too cold too fast, the deciduous trees will soon make their glorious display of yellows, oranges and reds. The trees will once again be ablaze, before dropping their photosynthesizing, sensing, communicating organs to the ground blanketing over their seeds and the soil.

Abundant food for all.

Deer’s food in leaf form eventually becomes soil food. Certainly—if hungry enough, deer can eat some leaves off the ground before they fully desiccate, before they lose most of their nutrition.

Meanwhile I am feeling sympathetic for the deer—I know that harder days are ahead. I am glad they are finding food now in the sparse acorns, leaves, grass where it is green and on the edges of our gardens.

I’m rooting for the fawns to get strong enough before winter so that they can continue to browse this land. Rooting, like getting to know the deer is helping me put roots down in this place. My roots gradually grow a few inches each year.

When I first moved to rural Washington, and then Oregon, I craved to become a person of place as fast as I could. I’m still as excited to be connected to nature, but I’ve grown more humble and I’m realizing that it’s natural to connect through a very slow, intentional process—rooting must be a slow, gradual process or my anchor will be unstable, or brittle, and I’ll only get my nourishment from the surface.

The oak trees are teaching me about patience. They are among the last to leaf out and the slowest to grow. But they are some of the most resilient, drought hardy trees in our region. And they produce some of the largest crops of starch.

Surely taking a few decades to get themselves established and start to produce acorns, if not half a century, doesn’t phase our Oregon White Oaks who can live up to half a millennia.

How many human generations does a 500 year old oak tree see come and go through those 5 centuries or 50 decades? How many deer families has it seen grazing on the grass and acorns beneath a canopy? How many fawns lay sheltered by its shade under the canopy? How many deer did its leaves feed in its early decades when it was smaller and bushier?

These are questions only the oak trees can answer.

We can’t quite grasp it with our minds. Our computer models will never be sophisticated enough to answer with certainty.

Questions of wonder aren’t meant to be answered with words. All of life’s mysteries are not meant to be defined, boxed into a finite concept, known with certainty.

My busy, inquisitive mind is remembering that questions of wonder are meant to lead to awe and gratitude so that my heart can sing again.

In this season of connections, in this season of in-betweens, in this season of abundance—my heart is singing out to deer and oak trees, pines and squirrels, our own greedy hands and mouths grabbing and eating both garden and wild food with delight.

Let me savor this next bite with less thoughts and judgements. Let me be content just to eat as the deer is content to feast on the forest floor, the same floor it rests upon when it is tired. The deer accepts the food that it comes upon without question.

Let me learn from the deer and the oak trees how to slow down and be more present in mind and heart so that I can hold more gratitude in this season of abundance—this season of in-betweens—so that I can be more rooted to this place, this Earth.

I am after all a mammal. I am a human being trying so hard to be a human doing. I forgot that I was a human animal, not much different than a deer, who also relies on the oak tree for more than we can know.

I am learning my place here. I am growing my roots into the soil.

I am grateful for you sister doe. Thank you brother buck. Good life little fawns. I see you deer.

Want to grow trees more naturally in the presence of deer? You don’t need to install a costly deer fence around your entire orchard or property. Protect your fruit and nut trees individually from deer. Fine tune deer protection based on your goals, habits of your local deer and any inherent deer resistant qualities within your trees. Allow deer and other wildlife safe passage through the land you steward.

See our course Protect Fruit and Nut Trees from Deer and Rodents for details!