It was like flying with the geese or swimming with the dolphins.

 So, as is my want, I ride a bike. We live on a defunct golf course, a victim of golf’s waning popularity and a global pandemic. The bad news is the course is ill-maintained and nobody plays golf. The good news is the cart path remains and nobody plays golf, i.e. the old cart path = my new bike path. We live near the 4th green. The course is on 46 acres. There is an open field of another 30 or so to the east. A rudimentary cattle fence separates the two.

I ride mainly on the front nine. Most days I do between 6 and 8 miles of streets and cart paths. The course has a few ponds. I see lots of wildlife, mostly common birds and now and again migratory birds, rabbits, and ground hogs. Hawks circle the course looking for mice. We have a few canada geese and one day I even got to see some fledglings on one of the practice greens near the old clubhouse accompanied by their parents.

Even though the course is no longer mowed by the owners, the city sends a crew out once or twice a year to knock down the weeds. Home owners also tend to migrate out onto the course to keep the grass down around their area. This summer, right before the city dispatched a crew, the grass had begun to get out of hand. Wildlife started appearing along the cart path as they were hidden by the three to four foot grass and the path made a nice highway to use from location to location. As I would make a turn onto a curve on the path, I’d see rabbits hopping in front of me and then plunging into the high grass. The ground hog sat up as I approached, looked at me and began to scurry out in front and jumped off when he realized I was moving along pretty good.

One nice day I approached the 4th tee area which is contiguous to the open field to the east. It narrows there between the road and the field with the cart path the only way through to the tee area. I had my head down and I was cranking out 13 mph on the gps speed-o. The grass to my left between the cart path and the roadway was 3-4 feet high. I heard rustling to my left and turned my head to see a deer’s eye looking back at me at the same level. She was running, having gotten flushed by my approach, neck and neck with my bike. She didn’t need to look my way, her eyes look to the side but it was clear she was attempting to clear the area. The street was to her left and I was to her right and the only way clear was straight ahead. She was motoring alongside me at my speed. I looked at her running alongside me, not four feet away. Our heads were side to side and I was looking straight into her eye. It was like flying with the geese or swimming with the dolphins. I was bicycling with a running deer, one of the herd. We ran neck and neck for what seemed like a long time but at 20 feet per second, it couldn’t have been more than 2-3 seconds and she popped it into overdrive, jumped ahead, leaped the cart path directly in front of me and then leaped the fence to go back to the adjacent open field. Bang, bang... bang. Instantly moving alongside me and just as quickly, up, up and away. A silent departure . I had not altered my speed one iota. As I rode, I shook my head and tried to look to the right but the experience was over, forever. Off I went on my way and off she went on hers.

Like most of us in the 2020s, I wanted something electronic to share on social media to prove it happened. Stop the deer and ask for a selfie. But I learned two things:

1. I do not have nor will I ever have the juice to match up with a deer. 

2. What makes this encounter amazing is that it shouldn't have happened, see #1. 

All I have is the memory of looking into that deer's eye and realizing we were moving in a serendipitous synchronicity. That'll have to be enough.