‘Look the deer! There! There!’ she said and surged against me as I held her in the front seat. A little jolt of electricity had come to her from the deer. Three little grey dams went away into the trees, celebrating a TVA of hooves.

She talked about the deer as we drove back to our camp in Yosemite. ‘Those deer are really something,’ she said. ‘I’d like to be a deer.’

When we turned into our campground there were three deer standing at the entrance, looking at us. They were the same deer or they were three different ones.

‘Look the deer!’ and the same electrical surge against me, enough perhaps to light a couple of Christmas tree lights or make a fan turn for a minute or toast half a slice of bread.

The deer followed close behind the car as we drove at deer speed into the camp. When we got out of the car, the deer were there. My daughter took out after them. Wow! The deer!

I slowed her down. ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Let Daddy take your hand.’ I didn’t want her to scare them or get hurt by them either, in case they should panic and run over her, a next to impossible thing.

We followed after the deer, a little ways behind and then stopped to watch them cross the river. The river was shallow and the deer stopped in the middle and looked in three different directions.

She stared at them, not saying anything for a while. How quiet and beautiful they looked and then she said, ‘Daddy, take off the deer’s head and put it on my head. Take off the deer’s feet, put them on my feet. And I’ll be the deer.’

The deer stopped looking in three different directions. They all looked in one direction towards the trees on the other side of the river and moved off into those trees.

So the next morning there was a band of Christians camping beside us because it was Sunday. There were about twenty or thirty of them seated at a long wooden table. They were singing hymns while we were taking down our tent.

My daughter watched them very carefully and then walked over to peek out at them from behind a tree as they sang on. There was a man leading them. He waved his hands in the air. Probably their minister.

My daughter watched them very carefully and then moved out from behind the tree and slowly advanced until she was right behind their minister, looking up at him. He was standing out there alone and she was standing out there alone with him.

I pulled the metal tent stakes out of the ground and put them together in a neat pile, and I folded the tent and put it beside the tent stakes.