
Writing Prompt: What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen in nature?
1998- Coconino National Forest- Flagstaff, Arizona. It was summer and heading up to the pine forests in Flagstaff was a welcome retreat from the burning hot and dusty desert weather back in the City of Phoenix.
We drove up for the weekend to camp in the National Forest. My daughter was three years old at the time and my son wasn’t so much as a thought yet. I remember my daughter as being a rough and tough tomboy. She was unstoppable. Broken bones, stitches, black eyes, nothing slowed her down. She would twirl about in her purple velvet Cinderella dress and ruby red shoes and then dive off furniture backwards.
We arrived late afternoon and set up camp. By the time we cleared debris, pitched our tent and got settled it was time for supper. When we climbed into our tent to sleep we could hear shuffling in the forest. I chalked it up as raccoons, javelina or birds. Nothing to be alarmed about, of course.
As three year old children often do (always do) my daughter woke with the sun the next morning. We stepped outside the tent and the scenery was alluring, the air shifted with a cool breeze, the sunlight glistened between the colossal pine trees.
The first thing my daughter did was march off to discover a climbable tree. I followed, being sure we didn’t veer too far from camp. As we approached a smaller pine she ran and lunged onto it’s branches.
Up she went. Up I went.
We squatted on a sturdy branch about ten feet from ground level and marveled at the beauty of the forest. We heard the ground crunching and when we looked over there was a baby deer, a doe, standing twenty feet away on the path.
“Look, a baby deer!” I felt one with nature.
Until a bear came barreling out of nowhere, ran past the doe taking the doe’s head with him and continuing to run toward our camp site. The Doe’s decapitated body fell limp on the ground.
“Holy crap, a bear!” I felt I could’ve shit my pants.
We both screamed. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
She jumped out of the tree, which was nuts, and I jumped down after her, which was nuts. I grab her by the hand and yelled, “Quick! To the truck!”
Thankfully we made it safely to the truck with our heads still intact. The scene had this Discovery Channel aura about it (though they most likely would’ve gone to commercial during the decapitation).
What we had witnessed was nature at it’s most scariest and that’s kind of cool, and rather disgusting too.

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