Tuesday Morning Coffee

It was about 34 degrees, crisp air, with lots of blue sky despite intermittent snow fall, and I was surrounded by towering evergreens. I was bundled in my coat, sitting outside on a mountain far from the city. I was on the edge of a meadow, overlooking a snow-lined river, looking beyond the river, to the snow-dusted trees that stretched across the mountain tops in the distance. A crowd of proud robins dashed and posed in the short grasses of the meadow. Varied thrush hid in the shadows of the forest, too shy to pose with the robins, but made themselves known by calling repeatedly in their single-noted, hollow, echoing trill.
A large doe grazed in the meadow just a few feet in front of me. She eyed me cautiously as I sat silently sipping my coffee. I warmed my hands around the clay mug, etched with leafy designs. I stared at her thick winter coat. It was brown and grey and shaggy. My childish instinct was to reach out and curl my fingers in her fur to feel the warmth that kept her, but I restrained, and sat still, appreciating her presence so near to me. I sipped my coffee.
Three more deer (two young doe and one young buck) approached from behind me and greeted the large doe and joined her, grazing in the grass in front of me. A fifth deer (another young doe) approached from my right, not hesitating at all, and joined the others, in a semi-circle formation around me, their heads bowed, grazing. I wondered what it must’ve looked like from someone else’s perspective, to see five deer forming a semi-circle around one lucky person, sitting there with her morning coffee.
Heavy tromping sounds came from my right as a large buck, with fuzzy winter nubs on his head, appeared from the trees. He was muscular and tall, and less trusting of me. He saw me move as I drew my mug to my lips for a sip of quickly cooling coffee, and he stopped and stared at me, his ears pushed forward. His alert stance drew caution from the other five deer, and they lifted their heads from grazing. All six stared at me, ears forward, black tails flicking. The buck moved cautiously toward his family, and completed the semi-circle before me. In that moment, I wished I was a part of the herd, a part of the semicircle, and not the outsider.
I sipped my cool coffee. The dregs that had settled on the bottom of the mug coated my tongue and made my teeth feel gritty.
The large doe turned and wandered further from me, into the meadow, at the advice of the cautious buck. All followed behind her. And my mug was then empty.

And here I sit, one day later, on a Wednesday, sipping my morning coffee in front of the sharp glare of the computer screen, and under the hum of fluorescent lights.