One early morning this week, while Josephine and I were walking, we looked over to see four deer standing across the road from us. We startled each other and then the deer ran out into the street just as a truck pulling a trailer came barreling around the corner. All four of the deer leaped into the road, one right after the other, and I could hear the truck struggling to break and avoid a collision. The group of four flew across the path in front of us and into the park we were circling for our walk. Josephine’s body stiffened into high alert, her ears pricked up high and she bounced after them as far the lead would allow her to go. It all happened in a blink and I still can’t believe that truck didn’t hit any of the deer.

Then the deer completely disappeared.

We never saw them or encountered them again even though we walked in the direction they had fled. It is like they never existed to begin with and I made it all up. Or I imagined them all standing there, lit by the headlights of the oncoming truck. It brought forth a memory from a camping trip in Colorado. Chris and I had traveled with my parents and were set up on top of a mountain somewhere north of Silverton. Chris and I had pitched our tent a few yards from my parents’ camper. One evening, just as the sun had set, Chris and I were walking from our tent to the camper. We had created a space between us as we maneuvered over the rocky, muddy terrain. It was not a large space. We could still reach our arms out and brush our fingertips together. Suddenly, two large deer with big antlers ran right between that space Chris and I had created between us. It was so sudden and fast. I remember feeling the breeze the deer had created as they flew past us, leaving Chris and I standing there frozen. We slowly turned to look at each other, both of us with stunned looks on our faces wondering if that had just really happened.

There are moments I purposefully do not photograph, moments were I make a conscious decision to set the camera down. Sometimes the camera separates me from the moment and I am less engaged. There are times when I feel that it is more important to be engaged than to be the observer. Then there are the moments that I can’t capture in a photograph, like the deer or that first hummingbird to zoom up to the feeder. They are the moments that make you hold your breath for a few seconds as if to slow the moment, make it last longer. The moments I cannot capture in a photograph are those that are impossibly magical. This might sound like a challenge, but it is because I cannot take a picture of that impossible magic is what makes it so special.

Today, I am grateful for the impossibly magical moments.