The Animal That Lives In Me

I did not know what a “spirit animal” was in 1979.

And if I did, I would have scoffed at the very idea.

Even though I grew up in Berkeley, Calif., arguably the birth place of woo-woo, I was also raised to be a skeptic.

But sometimes you don’t know what you need until it’s right in front of you.

It turns out I needed a spirit animal that day.

I was 17, alone in the Sierra Nevada wilderness, my weight hovering around 100 pounds.

I hadn’t eaten in two days. I had one more to go.

This was the solo portion of a 24-day survival course.

Without food, books or other humans to distract me, it was meant to be a vision quest.

I’d already been hiking with my patrol for two weeks, carrying a pack that was almost 75 percent of my weight.

My arm had gone numb, weak and tingly.

Though I was starving and profoundly bored, I was grateful to have break from hiking with a heavy pack. It’s all about perspective.

I’d finally run out of things to write in my journal; things I missed, my bedroom at home, my boyfriend, food.

Now, I was not only hungry. I was scared.

Clouds had begun to gather in the far distance.

The patrol leaders had warned warned us about the biggest killers in the wilderness were hypothermia, burns and infections.

My vigilant teenage thinking went like this: If you get wet and can't dry off, you’ll get cold, and this can lead to hypothermia.

This was the land of the Donner Party.

I sat naked atop a granite slab above the tree line, looking down over a ravine, trying to calm myself.

The sound of the wind blowing through the trees shushed up from below.

The clouds thickened, darkened a bit, though still far away. Thunder rumbled.

My heart beat faster.

I knew that my fear was my greatest enemy.

So I made up a little Winnie-the-Pooh-like poem for this occasion.

It’s nice to know

that if it rains

I’ll be okay.

I repeated it, as I rocked back and forth on my haunches, my arms wrapped around my knees. I paused between each line, until I could hear the strength and conviction in my own voice.

It was an invocation.

Suddenly, three deer appeared: a buck, a doe and a fawn.

I froze, holding my breath as we do when we want the moment to last forever. The doe and I locked eyes. She froze, too, taking me in with her liquid brown eyes.

I don’t know what she saw in mine, but I like to think she saw one of her kind.

I held my breath.

Then a thought came to me: the deer came while I was rocking and breathing and reciting a poem, though much quieter now. I was soothing myself — or trying — and they came.

I once heard that a deer knows if a mountain lion is hungry from a mile away. They did not stumble upon me. They chose me.

It was as though being myself, taking care of myself, was a signal to the deer that I was safe.

Though it would be another two decades before I recognized what had happened to me in the High Sierra Nevada Wilderness that day, I believe now that they answered my call.

So, I began to breathe again.

The deer family began grazing around me.

The clouds gathered and darkened. When thunder clapped, they bounded away, heading for cover.

For a moment I was bereft, alone again, abandoned.

But then I remembered: I am the girl who called the deer.

If I trust my deepest inner voice, I will always be okay.

It did not rain after all.

When my patrol picked me up after three days, I could not speak at first.

Someone told me later, I was skittish, like a deer.

I’d been initiated. I was wild.

This is the magic I still carry.

What’s your spirit animal? Do you have an experience that changed you forever?