When the night is split in two by an apparition, a distant fire, the deer suddenly recalls the deepness of a forgotten youth. He sees the darkness of a forest and smells the resinous scent of pine. He remembers places of sunlight, and other places of cool speckled shadow, and shallow bends in a winding stream where the sounds of the water are hushed, places where he would not hear the murmur of the water's current until his head was bent low to the clear bubbling surface to take a drink.

At some point, and it is impossible to remember when, his life had lifted him out of the forest and led him onto a path that crossed through younger meadows and open prairies. In these places the animals he met were more cautious and reserved than those of the forest, and they watched him with suspicious eyes. In the whistle of wind shushing through the stiff blades of long yellow grass, he heard the first rumors of a danger. In his memory, this awakening to the uneasiness of the world was ever-linked to a startling, sudden awareness of his mother and three older sisters, and of the care with which they selected every step they took, every bite of food they ate.

As he grew older, a fear came upon him. He learned that every animal in the wild survived by living lives that responded to the unnamed threat of danger. His mother and sisters no longer tolerated his inattention to his surroundings. One by one his sisters left his side, and one morning he woke to find his mother had also departed. In that terrible moment a great panic seized him and in a fever he searched for her. But suddenly he became aware of his own breathing, became aware of the sturdiness of his own bones, and the strength of his own muscles. He was alone; but the old nameless fear was joined to a new awareness of freedom.

It was early on a chilly blue afternoon, and he was grazing by the edge of a young maple woods when he chanced upon a scent in the cool autumn air that he had never before experienced. He looked up and saw four strange animals looking away into the distance. Though he had never seen creatures such as these, nor smelled scents such as theirs, a whisper of premonition thrilled the backs of his ears with a shiver, and he knew, without really knowing, that these creatures were the source of those rumors of danger which had once woken him from his childhood. The four animals immediately became aware of him, and when they turned towards him the two smallest of the creatures pierced the morning with yells, dire and shrill. The deer bolted away from them in terror.

After some time, he realized that he had escaped. But he could not shake the memory of terror, nor the helplessness of how the fear had gripped his mind.

He had, throughout his life, been alert for danger, never questioning his ability to locate the nameless threat should he ever encounter it. Now he understood that he had never encountered such a threat before. Or, if he had encountered the threat at some moment in his past, the threat had always proved much less dangerous than anticipated. Within the very moment of survival and relief, a new terror came upon him, and with chilling clarity the deer concluded that the threat he had always feared was different, was other than any threat he had ever experienced. This is the moment when he leaves his past forever. He wakes one last time—as he once awakened from his childhood into the knowledge of danger—he now wakes from his dream of living: the challenge and all the meaning of his existence is fast approaching.

His fear increases. The suspense becomes the dominant force in his life. He ceaselessly worries that he has never before been adequately tested. He is forced to trust to instincts that he believes he has never used—and all the instances of his continual survival now seem less like evidences of self-worth than of a hidden voyeur's omniscient mockery.

And so it is for the deer, when at long last he arrives at the darkest hour of that certain time of night, at the certain midnight highway, at that certain moment of his life when all his existence assumes the imminence of a foretold mortal danger for which he believes his senses cannot prepare him. When the deep blackness of the universe is shattered by a runway of white fire, it is with endless surprise that the deer recognizes the headlights. Tears blur his vision: he can scarcely credit that he has successfully identified the challenge to his purpose, the purpose of all his fears and the purpose of his torturous need to survive—he stands at attention, and makes himself stare consciously and directly into the truth of his fate.

In the terror of this moment of crisis, this deer will discover that all fears are groundless, and worthless, and degrading. Fears are curses and abominations. Put together into one, fear is the ruination of his life and all life everywhere: he will discover that his life has wasted away in self-doubt; and in unconscious, certain anticipation of damnation. Therefore, when all the traces of the night around him have melted away into the white fire, the deer must find a way to surrender his most deeply buried desire to the God of Death and Oblivion.

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