Guided Deer Walk

I signed up for this as it was a chance to enter the Epping Forest Deer Sanctuary which is usually closed to the public. I didn't hold out much hope of getting close to the deer. When we spotted them they were in the distance and when they spotted us they ran even further away. It was lovely to see a whole herd of dark-coated deer on the move in the sunshine though. The rut is just starting but our guide said that there isn't usually much action on lovely warm sunny days like today. 

A man brought his two children who were six and about four. They were beautifully behaved and amusing. Another couple had a baby in a papoose. The little dear was wearing a knitted hat with ears and it sort of sang in time with its mother's footsteps. I had a cuddle with a horse we met and asked why its rider was holding the reins so tightly that its head was curving downwards. She explained that is the stance used in dressage. That's why it looked so classically correct and handsome. I nearly blipped the lovely longhorn cattle that are grazing  to restore historical semi-natural wood pasture to ensure that the veteran trees and their associated flora and fauna survive. It was a very interesting and enjoyable morning.


Today's poem is A Drinking Song by WB Yeats. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50337/a-drinking-song


Maybe Yeats is referring to Maud Gonne. It was love at first sight but she repeatedly rejected him, turning down his offers of marriage many times. In the end he transferred his affections to her daughter Iseult but she rebutted him too. He married George Hyde Lees and the sucess of this liason was not what came in at the eye but because she had a facility for 'automatic writing.' Yeats underwent an operation when he was sixty-nine called the Steinach vasoligature which caused an outburst of lyrical poetry and gave him a second puberty. He became involved in romantic affairs with younger women.


I'm still behind with comments as I've been busy editing images. I hope to catch up in the near future.