The Deer that Guided Us Home

A memory shared with me by my mom, Judy Ferguson

I’m thinking it would’ve been the winter of 2008, which was probably my last winter in Spokane, WA.  We lived about two or three thousand feet above Spokane Valley, out in the country, off of a country road.  I had been there a few winters, but not anything really drastic.  We might have had a few days of bad winter weather, or a storm that would come and go.  I remember this so well because we lived in a single wide mobile home, two miles out into the country on two acres of property.  Neighbors were far off.  We did have neighbors, but they weren’t right close to us.  There were horses and deer and all kinds of things that you find out in the country like that.  We had gotten word that there was a bad storm on the way, and of course, Dan and Nadeen always seemed to be prepared.  It was probably a little bit from her family background because that’s the kind of family she was raised in, and then Dan just being the conservative, concerned man that he was.  He was sure to check and see that we had kerosene and batteries for flashlights and different things like that that you need to check on when you know a storm is coming. 

We were in bed that night and we heard the wind blowing so hard all night long.  It was just so bitter cold and such strong winds.  I thought maybe it just seemed that way because I wasn’t used to being in a mobile home.  We got up at daylight and went to look out and see what the outside looked like, and we couldn’t see out of our windows or get our door open.  The snow had drifted so much.  We weren’t sure what we were going to do.  It didn’t take us long to realize that we had no modern conveniences whatsoever.  I didn’t get real alarmed.  I thought, “You know, this happens.  And in a few hours they generally have things back on.”

Well, I’d never lived up on the side of a mountain like that before, out in the country, in a state that far north.  Little did I know that we would be marooned there for six or seven days.  We didn’t have electricity.  He had some kind of a radio that we could listen to things on.  I don’t know if it was battery operated, or what.  I’ve forgotten.  Through the week we were totally snowed in.  I think they measured nine feet on the ground, and of course there were drifts on top of that.  It was the worst winter weather I had ever encountered.  Dan had encountered that before, but not on a regular basis.

There were some young people that lived further up on the mountain, and there were older people, like us.  They all had ATV’s or snowmobiles, different kinds of equipment where they could dig out their own roads on the mountain.  They started coming by, three or four days after the storm.  Every once in a while they’d stop and knock or yell to see if we needed anything.  After we went through this for about a week, it started wearing on my nerves considerably.  He seemed to be at peace with it, but I had never encountered anything like that before.  He said, "You know what, enough of the neighbors have been out.  Some of the drifts have been cleared.  I really think with my four-wheel drive we can get down the hill and get into the valley and pick up milk and bread, and maybe grab a bite to eat if there’s anything available, just so we’ll have something warm in our tummies.”

So we took our big adventure and we went out around lunchtime.  Sure enough, things were fine once we got off of the country road.  The main roads were fine.  We went down into the valley where, if you kept going past the temple, that’s where most of the restaurants and stores and things like that were.  We decided that we would just check it out and see what we could do while we were out.  We went into Denney’s and all of our neighbors were in there!  We all looked like Eskimos because we were all wrapped up in winter clothes.  Everyone had taken advantage of  the sunshine and gotten out too.  We had quite a little gathering there in the restaurant with our neighbors and other people that were there.  It was old time-ish.  Like something right out of the past.  We decided we would stop there by the temple, there was a grocery store, and we thought we’d stop and see if we would be lucky enough to get any milk and bread, which we did. 

Dan said, “We need to start getting back up the hill because when that sun drops, it’s going to drop fast.”  So we decided we’d head back home.  He had four-wheel drive, so we got up that hill okay.  Some people were having trouble, but we made it okay.  We got up there and we turned left onto our road, over the railroad track, and we could tell that it hadn’t been traveled and there must have been a lot of drifting going on.  Sure enough, when we got out of the little town (there was about two blocks of a little town) and got out where that country road started, you couldn’t see the road anywhere.

It was scary.  Dan said, “Well, I’ve driven this road a lot.  Let’s see if we can make it back to our property”.  We were driving and he was very cautious.  The problem is that on that country road, on either side of the road, there was at least a two-three foot drop off.  We knew we had to stay on the road or we were going to be in trouble.  He was driving so slow.  The sun was setting and it was getting a little dusky outside, and it was very cold and windy.  He was very nervous, and I didn’t see him nervous very often.  I was kind of ignorantly oblivious.  I was scared and worried, but not like he was.

We were just getting to the bend in the road that took us out into the country, where there were hills and dips.  Suddenly this buck leapt off of the mountain side, over the ditch, onto the road and just stopped there in front of our truck.  Dan stopped and we figured the buck would dart off as soon as he saw us, but he was obviously waiting on his family.  Sure enough, a few seconds later, there came another deer and a couple of little babies.  They had trouble jumping over, but they finally got off of the mountain side and onto the road.

They were just standing there and we were stopped behind them.  We didn’t want to scare them, so we sat there.  They would stop and look at us, and then they would turn and look ahead.  Then they started walking.  They didn’t dart off the road away from the car like they normally do.  They started walking.

 I said, “Wow, Dan! They’re walking right in front of our car.”  He said, “Well I’ll just stay back so we don’t scare them.”  So we just went real slow behind them and they would get a few yards ahead of us and stop and look back like they were saying, “Are you coming?” 

We started feeling very comforted and blessed.  I said, “Dan, those deer probably know what they’re doing.  He said, “I’m sure they do!  That buck does, anyway.  We’re going to be okay” 

This happened all the way for the next two miles.  The deer would walk as a family in front of us, they would get a few feet away from us and stop and turn around.  By then we’d already recognized it as a very tender mercy of the Lord.  But then it got even better because once we got all the way up to where our property line met the road, they stopped and looked at us, and then darted up to the right, down the road that continued.  We had to drive just a few more feet to get into our driveway, pull into the garage, and traipse inside through the deep snow. 

We always knew that had been a tender mercy of the Lord - for those deer to be there when they were, to not be afraid of us, and for us to know how to work with them.  They led us back home and we both knew that deep in our hearts.  It’s been many years, but it’s still so fresh in my memory.  It was a beautiful moment.  I can’t forget it.