“I had no question in my mind that here’s a gift that has come to the door, and I will give this gift, whatever it requires. And what came back? Many times what was required of me. My life has been enlarged, enriched, ennobled.”
We live alongside wild animals all the time. We see deer at the edges of roads, in fields, disappearing into the woods. We might stop for a moment to admire them, but rarely do we think about who they are, what their lives are like, or what they might be feeling.
Paul Bochner spent more than twenty years living beside a piece of land where deer came to give birth. He watched them, admired them, and left them alone. Until one day, a young deer with a badly injured leg appeared at his back door.
He named her Penelope.
Paul has written a beautiful book about that relationship, Penelope: A Love Story. But it's about so much more than one man and one deer. It's about trust, love, loss, and the rich emotional lives of animals that we so often overlook.
And it's about how much we might discover if we were willing to pay closer attention.
Please listen and share.
In gratitude,
Elizabeth Novogratz
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