I write this in the North Woods early on the morning of Memorial Day. Ten minutes ago, my daughter interrupted me – thank goodness.
“Dad, the fawn and doe are in the creek.”
Three days ago, strolling along a grassy, two-rut path, taking photos of white trillium thick as dandelions on suburban lawns, I saw what I thought was a tree stump. Looking closer, I found a curled-up fawn, ears twitching, tiny stomach rising and falling as if panting.
My daughter now points to a spindly-legged fawn stumbling up the creek a pinecone’s toss from our cabin, mom beside it.
“The mother drops them in the woods,” our neighbor on the other side of the creek, Brook, whispered when I showed her the curled, sleeping fawn. It took me a moment to realize “drops” is a euphemism for giving birth. “She leaves to forage, then returns at night to walk it someplace safer.” The fawn has no scent, I learn, nor can it travel immediately after birth; the mother takes off so as not to endanger the vulnerable newborn.
A few minutes later, at my desk, an email pings in from my eldest brother. “This important day is more than family, grilling out and an extra weekend day off. My sincere thanks to those of you who have served our country in the armed forces.”
He attaches a video showing cemeteries in North America, Europe, North Africa and elsewhere, their crosses lined up in perfectly symmetrical form, each graveyard in turn displaying the number of markers, each a thousand or more than the previous one.
Today, the white trilliums turn into markers for the honored dead.
I have another brother who served as an infantry lieutenant in the U.S. Army. In the late 1960s, his unit was stationed on the Korean DMZ. He told me that at night North Korean infiltrators would make their way south through the DMZ to gain intelligence on strategic locations in the Republic of Korea. Over four months, his battalion had 11 men killed, most of them in accidents and “friendly fire” incidents.
NPR reports the highlights of Memorial Day observances across the nation.
On Facebook, someone posts the Langston Hughes poem “Peace”: We passed their graves: / The dead men there, / Winners or losers, / Did not care. / In the dark / They could not see / Who had gained / The victory.
The day before, a North Woods friend, Bob, guided me and four others through a thick forest of long- and short-needle pines, birch, oak, tamarack, aspen and grueling ground cover to witness four or five beaver dams constructed with the artistry of a Leonardo DaVinci. The stream was dying, he told us, along with its native trout population. I stayed safely on the bank while the others stepped onto built-up logs, branches and sticks. With only their hands and a black steel fire poker, they freed one small path, a tiny waterfall, to stop the lake from rising and to allow the stream to flow free. Or, at least, freer.
“It’s a little,” Bob said of their effort, “but it’s not enough.”
Looking back, it was, however small, a victory.
This Memorial Day, that is enough to go on.
• Rick Holinger has taught English and creative writing on several academic levels. His writing appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, Chautauqua, Southern Indiana Review and elsewhere. His books of poetry, “North of Crivitz,” and essays, “Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences,” are available at local bookstores, Amazon or richardholinger.net. Contact him at editorial@kcchronicle.com.