So-Slow Book Club Week 3: What we see, and can no longer unsee

What happens when we are no longer free to walk away from our impact?

Join us in reading The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl in a low-pressure, year-long book club. The full post, including journal and discussion prompts, is for paid subscribers; feel free to check out one of the free posts in this series and if you like what you see, upgrade your membership for the full experience.

I was thirty-eight years old when I first saw a deer get hit by a car.

Considering I have always lived in regions where deer-car collisions are a constant threat, bumpers sport deer-shaped dents and carcasses litter the roadsides, maybe I shouldn’t have been so shocked.

But it was shocking anyway, the sight of the doe’s body flipping over and over after impact, graceful even in its tumble along the shoulder of the I-80 toll road somewhere in western Illinois as my family returned home from a two-week road trip.

“Oh no, oh no,” I cried again and again, as my then-husband clenched the wheel and his teeth, irritated by my outburst. I suppose it is annoying to be dealing with 80 MPH freeway traffic while your wife suddenly starts moaning inconsolably in the seat next to you…but then again, he had somehow missed seeing the collision, and couldn’t possibly understand.

I had seen it, however, and could never not-see it again.