The White Hart

That's not my photo, more's the pity, it's a stock photo from Unsplash. I wasn't fast enough, you see, to get a picture of my own. 

A couple of years ago I was riding along the Leicestershire back roads when I came around a bend and saw three white harts. Beautiful, pure white stags, just standing in the middle of this country lane. It was so astounding, I wondered if I might be having some kind of vision of the Trinity. It was like a moment from Celtic mythology. I don't think I'd have been entirely surprised if, like Aslan or Balaam's Ass, they'd spoken to me.

It turned out that the deer had been brought in by a local wedding venue but had escaped their confinement. I didn't see them again, but I heard they'd never been recaptured. 

Fast forward: this morning, on exactly the same lane, at exactly the same spot, I found myself face to face with nine fawns in the road. Three brown. Three partly brown and partly white. And three pure white. After a few moments they bounced off across the fields, heading for the same woods the three harts had run towards the last time I was stopped. 

It wasn't a vision: they were real deer, the descendants (some of them, at least) of the real stags I saw before. They weren't mystical or mythological or anything like that. But as they bounced off I was left, just as I had been by their fathers, with a deep sense of awe. Because they were so indescribably beautiful, and moments like this don't come along every day.