The Wild Marsh by Rick Bass Page A

of the kennels' doors.
    The moon is so bright, I can see the gleam of the deers' eyes. I recognize one of them as the doe who lured in the buck for me on the last day of the season; the same buck whose antlers are drying in the garage, between her and me. The same buck whose backstrap I am taking out of the freezer—am holding now in my hand—for tomorrow's dinner. The muscle that had powered the animal that had chased her.
    Does she carry his progeny within her? Who will outlast whom?
    She, and the others, just stand there looking at me, dark silhouettes in that amazing blue light. It's too cold out for them to run back off into the woods; they're seriously intent on pawing at that hay.
    I could take ten, twelve steps and be out among them. They can't see me, back in the darkness, the blackness: they can only sense and scent me.
    It's so cold. They're shivering. It's so cold that the dogs aren't even coming out of their kennel to bark at them but are instead remaining inside, shivering also.
    After a few moments, the deer lower their heads and go back to eating.
    Â 
    I should comment briefly on the strangeness of the phenomenon that occurs in this tight-knit little valley, deep into every winter, every January: a preponderance of extrasensory perceptions among and between all of us. I don't want you to think we're all whacked out and cuckoo, believing overmuch in that kind of thing, but neither can I deny that it exists, late into January. I'm confident that someday far into the future (or perhaps not so far), scientists will have found an easy and credible explanation for it; but in the meantime, we dream it, we live it, it's present.
    It comes in waves and spells: rises, surges, crests, then fades away, as if summoned in egress or regress by the moon's tides.
    During the last week of January, I am involved in three startling incidents, one right after the other.
    All occur in the out-of-doors.
    The first one happens while driving home from duck hunting with Tim. It's a sunny afternoon, and I'm tired and weary from paddling, and feeling good because I've got a couple of ducks, mallards, in the back of the truck, and I'm thinking how good they'll taste.
    In my fatigue, the unbidden thought occurs to me that I'd very much like to see a flock of wild turkeys crossing the road. I don't know where the thought comes from: the nearest turkeys are over on the Idaho line, more than twenty-five miles away. I've never seen, or heard of, turkeys over by the dam, where I am now. But I have not driven more than a mile than I look up and see, indeed, a flock of wild turkeys pass through a stand of open ponderosa pine.
    The second incident occurs the next day. My friend Bill and I are driving up into the mountains to go backcountry skiing. We're just riding along, shooting the shit—way up in the high country, past where any game should be found, at this snowy time of year—and I have the thought—actually, it's almost like a craving—that I'd like to see a lynx or a bobcat.
    We round the corner, and a young bobcat is standing in the middle of the road, standing where I have never seen one before. The bobcat stares at us for a moment—is it my imagination, or does it seem to be hesitating, as if to be sure we see it?—and then bounds off the road.
    Every day is a gift.
    The third incident occurs later that night. I dream, again completely unbidden, that I am writing a letter to a friend of ours, discussing how much she and I love the short stories of Alice Munro.
    The next day, in the mail—it's as eerie as if I have written the letter, or read it in its entirety, before its inception—there is a letter from this friend, detailing why and how very much she loves the short stories of Alice Munro.
    ***
    Some people get depressed up here, in the long, lightless winter. I've talked to some of these folks, and they say that it's the strangest thing: that when it, the depression, hits, they're still fully