Yesterday I headed up the lower road that follows along Hagar’s Cove with chainsaw in hand.  A recent storm had toppled spruce all over  McNutt’s Island and I wanted to clean up those that had fallen across our lower road.  For years the Van Buskirk brothers along with Lyndon Crowell have kept the island roads open.  They have been the island’s road crew.  Now it was my turn to join the rotation.  But I felt intimidated.  They are seasoned at this sort of stuff, and I am not.  Still, the job needed to be done, and it was a sunny, albeit cold, day.   I wanted to do my part.

The storm had left the road with a modicum of snow, but mostly ice.  It was a bit treacherous making my way along its slippery surface.  I noticed that the sheep are wise enough to stay to the edges.  I followed their tracks.   I made my way along, stopping every few hundred feet to cut away another fallen spruce, sprawled across the road like a fallen soldier in its battle against the wind.  The roots of the spruce are shallow.  They really don’t stand a chance.

Then I came across a scene that made me laugh.   Amid the sheep tracks,  a second set of tracks emerged, crossing the road from the cove to the forest.  A deer had obviously intended to cross the road.  But, in the middle of the apparent crossing, there was a huge indentation in the ice/snow covered road where apparently the deer had lost her footing,  tried to catch herself, only to slip further until her large frame obviously came slamming down upon the road, sliding several feet.  The imprint on the road glaring.  What a fall!

Then, near the far edge of the road, the deer had obviously been able to right herself, heading off into the woods.  I wondered if, after her abrupt fall, she had looked around to see if anyone had taken in her mishap.   Had she felt embarrassed or angry at herself for such a clumsy mistake, as I would have?  But the tracks leading away from the road suggested that she had simply picked herself up and moved on.  No shame.  No moral judgment.  Just an accident on a slippery road. 

I said the scene made me laugh.  It wasn’t a mean laugh.  I wasn’t laughing at the slipping deer.  It just seemed funny to me that a deer, to me a thing of grace and beauty, could experience a hard, legs-flailing fall, not unlike what happens to all us humans from time to time.  I laughed because the image actually comforted me.  I suddenly felt not so alone.  If a graceful deer could slip and fall and move on, then perhaps my own falls were not out of the ordinary.

That was how I felt as I studied the skid on the icy road.  Ordinary.  Just me and my chainsaw doing a job that needed to be done.  Yes, it had been done for years by persons much more seasoned than me, but now I was doing it, and, despite my own sense of inadequacy and intimidation, that was sufficient.  If a deer can slip and fall on the ice, then I can take my place as the newest member of the McNutt’s Island road crew.  In fact, I can take my place in any endeavor.  And so can we all.

Greg Brown
Executive and Life Coach
greg@gregbrownonline.com