How a Day in the Woods Taught Me to Surrender

Sometimes, death can be our greatest teacher

Out in the woods, in November 2014, my brother and I stumbled upon the body of a stag that had, we surmised, been killed in a fight with another of its kind. I was unusually upset by this discovery.

It was a very difficult time in my life — I had just lost a 7-year relationship and was about to lose my home and my sweet dog. It seemed like death was everywhere — bold, aggressive, selfish, and indifferent.

The stag had, after all, been in the prime of his life. His death seemed so completely senseless, so utterly unfair.

Just like I had been in the prime of my life, and the death of everything I loved seemed equally senseless and unfair.

The coyotes came to dine on that beautiful stag, leaving only sinew and bone. Eventually, they carried his skeleton several feet down the hill from where he had died.

I went out and visited him many times over the following months, wanting to honor the powerful, beautiful creature he had been. Wanting to acknowledge the sadness and meaninglessness of the loss he had suffered, just the way I wanted someone else to acknowledge the pain of my own loss.

It seemed like death was everywhere — bold, aggressive, selfish, and indifferent.

I felt moved to save his skull with his beautiful antlers that were characterized by a mild deformity (two prongs that had fused together). Yet with each visit, I felt that it wasn’t yet time, that taking the skull away from the rest of his body at that point would have been too disrespectful.

The mourning period, I felt, was not yet over. My stag friend needed to rest where he was for the time being.

And then one day I went out to the hill…and his skull was gone.

Over the next three months, I tirelessly searched 40 acres of forest and field, determined to find the skull. All of this had taken place on privately owned land, so it wasn’t likely that someone had come out to the hill and stolen the skull. The most likely culprit was a bored coyote, or a hungry cougar, dragging the head to another location.

My search yielded no results, however, causing me to question whether or not my theory was correct. Perhaps someone had trespassed on the land and stolen my stag’s skull. In these parts, a rack like that would certainly have been considered a prize.

I couldn’t bear the thought of that. A stranger wouldn’t have known my stag’s story. They wouldn’t have understood the senseless loss. They wouldn’t have felt the weight of sorrow, or the responsibility I carried as a witness to this event (or at least its aftermath).

I felt almost violated by this new loss, becoming more and more certain over the months that someone had, indeed, stolen the skull.

Just like I had been in the prime of my life, and the death of everything I loved seemed equally senseless and unfair.

Meanwhile, my dog had taken his final nap, leaving this world forever. I had moved out of my house and into a raggedy duplex in a bad part of town. In the months that passed after finding the stag’s body, the journey of loss in my life continued until there was no more gas left in the tank, no more steam in the engine. Loss, in all its forms, finally came to rest.

And so did I.

After work, I rested in my armchair by the fireplace with a blanket on my lap and knitting needles in my hands.

I rested in the comfort of my writing, among all the friends I had met on the page, in my imagination.

I rested in the beauty of the natural world, using my macro lens to take extreme close-ups of my favorite plants and flowers.

I rested in mythology and fairy tales.

I rested in the artist’s palette, watercolor paint in every shade oozing across the surface.

I rested in music — sad love songs and songs I made up, singing to myself as grown-up, self-administered lullabies.

I rested in Warrior II and Triangle Pose.

I rested in books, both audio and paperback.

I rested in steaming hot showers.

I rested in tears.

And, whenever I could get my mind to quiet down to a dull roar, I rested in sleep.

And one day, I rested in the peaceful realization and understanding that I might never get back what I had lost, just like my stag will never get back what he lost.

On the morning of my 40th birthday, I rose early to take a walk before the heat of the midsummer day hit. I chose a road that ran parallel to the private property where my stag had died.

As I came around a bend, I noticed a deer skull resting against the fence of another ranch property. I stopped, wondering if it could be the skull I was looking for.

But no, surely not. Nearly every ranch in that neighborhood had a deer skull hammered to its fence or its barn door. This had to be another random deer.

Upon further inspection, I saw that this skull’s antlers were slightly deformed. Two prongs had fused together.

I was stunned. This was my stag.

Looking west, through the trees, I realized I could see, several hundred yards away, the very place he had lain the last time I saw him. It had somehow never occurred to me that the coyotes had carried him across the property line, to the road beyond, and that the neighbors would find it and take it as a decoration.

I was both jubilant and enraged. I had finally found my stag’s skull — and on my birthday, no less! But it was mine no more. Someone else had claimed him, as I had feared. Someone else who knew nothing about this creature’s story, or how he came to be nothing but bone.

I confess that I fantasized about stealing the skull back. No one would ever know, out in that rural neighborhood, and even if they did, who would make a stink about a skull?

But again, I felt moved to let it rest.

I wasn’t intended to take the skull when it was still mine to take. And even though I continued to feel an ownership of it, in some peripheral way, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it did not want me to take it.

I had finally found my stag’s skull — and on my birthday, no less! But it was mine no more.

This knowing was almost unbearable, at first. Surely, it couldn’t end like that. Surely, I had not come upon that creature in the woods and been given its last story to tell, only to lose him to someone who did not know or care what had happened…someone who probably only saw him as a decoration, not a living being with a story of his own.

The tension remains every time I see him. Now? I ask. Should I pick you up and just run, breaking through the trees, down the hill, into the little valley, and back up the other side to where you died, to where we’ll both be safe?

But no. Again and again, I’m asked to let him rest.

I comply with this request, but I’m afraid. What happens if I let him rest? Will I lose this tenuous connection to another wild creature forever?

There is a little death in resting. Edgar Allen Poe called sleep “little slices of death.” The quieting of the body. The slowing of the breath and heartbeat.

Whatever form of rest we take, there is a death in it. Rest, passive and harmless as it may appear, deeply changes us. And while we think of it as an indulgence, it’s actually a transaction. Rest comes with a cost. It requires that little slice of death. We give up action. Productivity. And sometimes, we give up things that are dear to us. Sometimes, rest requires that we walk away and leave something — or someone — to remain where they are. Without us.

Rest is not passive, simple, or even easy. It is a choice, a journey, a challenge. It heals us by asking us to surrender to those little slices of death. Whether that’s the time we could have spent doing something else or the friend that we came upon in the woods one day who happened to meet a tragic end and cannot continue the journey alongside us.

Sometimes, the intersection of circumstances only lasts a moment before we are asked to move on. To let it rest.

And so I have.

© Yael Wolfe 2019

If you like my work and want to stay updated, click here to subscribe to my newsletter.