I was driving to the train station on my way to work this morning, driving into the blinding sunlight of a new day as it poured over the Wasatch Range that borders the valley on the east.The air outside was a bit on the crisp side, following a downright chilly night, but I could tell from the quality of the sky that we’d have pleasant springtime temperatures by afternoon. “Mysterious Ways” by U2 had just started to thrum from the speakers, and I was feeling good… if not yet fully awake. Mornings have never been my best time.

Traffic was moderate as my Mustang dropped into the broad gully known to locals as “the river bottoms.” Until just a few years ago, this was a strip of undeveloped wetlands that formed a natural boundary between the east side of the valley and the west, but subdivisions and office towers are sprouting even here now, and the modest two-lane roads that used to cut through the bottoms with an almost apologetic air have swelled into four- and, in some places, six-lane highways. The posted speed limit is 50, but nobody pays much attention to that; my speedometer needle was edging toward 60 as the downward slope leveled off and my car started to blast across the flat center of this valley within the valley

And then I saw the deer standing on the far side of the road. It wasn’t a huge specimen, probably a doe or a young male, but I knew it was still big enough to cause a lot of damage if it were to have a close encounter with a car traveling at 60 mph. I let off the gas pedal and kept my eyes locked on the animal, feeling, as always, a spark of adrenaline and wonder at encountering a wild creature in a place that feels more and more tamed with every passing year. I found myself thinking of the time when my friend Jeremy clipped a deer in his Grand Am, and ended up needing to replace his entire front fender, and the wheel on that side as well.

Maybe I detected some flicker of increased muscular tension or a certain twitch of the ear. Maybe it was some inscrutable vestige of a sixth sense, some holdover from our distant ancestors’ hunter-gatherer days. Whatever it was that tipped me off, I knew, somehow I just knew, that the deer was about to make its move. And then it was in motion, bounding across the westbound lanes at incredible speed for a mere animal, the SUV coming in my direction braking hard enough to drop its nose toward the pavement. The deer made it to the center island and I tried to telepathically tell it to just stay put… but my Spidey-sense was still jangled, and I knew it was going to stand there only a fraction of a second before continuing on its way across the eastbound lanes… into my lane…

I saw, very clearly, that the animal’s speed was perfectly matched to intersect with my own course. I knew I couldn’t stop in time, and the image of Jeremy’s ruined fender was replaced in my mind with a picture of the deer impacting my beloved Mustang dead-center, rolling up across my hood, crushing in my windshield, falling into the cab with me…

My instincts took over. I was still thinking about what it would look like, what it would feel like, to have Bambi come crashing through my windshield, even as my foot mashed the accelerator to the floor. My Mustang boomed forward, closing the distance to the interception point. My fingers tightened on the steering wheel and turned it to the right, swerving the car into the emergency lane, trying to give the deer a little more space to have to cover before it hit me. My laggard imagination now pictured the animal’s broad chest plowing into my driver’s-side door….

And then I was clear, drifting back into the lane where I was supposed to be. I saw the deer in my rear-view mirror finish his (or her) run across the road with a final bounce that carried it over an embankment and down to the marshy riverbank below the level of the road, safely out of the human machine-traffic and back in its own realm. I kept my eyes peeled for another one as my car climbed the opposite side of the gully, but I saw no more.

The road carried me forward, past car washes and fast-food franchises and restaurants and grocery stores and strip malls. I got lucky and coasted through green lights the whole way. I turned into the park-and-ride lot and locked up my trusty ragtop and walked across a field of asphalt to board a gleaming white train. The same gleaming white train I ride every weekday morning into a downtown of concrete and skyscrapers and hemmed-in civilization. More and more tamed every year… but not entirely tamed just yet.

That thought makes me smile.