Fifteen years ago, purely by good luck, we were able to, in essence, trade our house in a suburban New Jersey community for a modest house and five glorious acres on Bernards Mountain in central New Jersey. When my wife, Barbara, saw the property for the first time, as she drove slowly up the long driveway, past the one-acre pond, she knew we were truly "home".

"Shangri-la", she said.

And, so it is. Every day, no matter what the season, the first thing we do is look out on the pond from our bedroom window and marvel at the beauty of the pond and the woods that surround it - and our good fortune.

When we first moved in, we wanted to give our five acres a name that reflected our feelings about it. We tried for weeks to find one or two words that, for us, summarized these feelings and finally, thanks to the American Indian Museum, found our name - Awoffagamme. It is a Delaware Indian word and, like many words in the Native American lexicon, it has multiple connotations; it means peace, tranquility, and heaven, all wrapped in one.

Of course, we share our five acres with a lot of others who seem to find it as appealing as we do. The pond is filled with wide-mouthed bass, and there are always ducks, sometimes as many as 120. And, there is a herd of deer who make their home in our woods. Geese would like to join the menagerie, but they make too much of a mess so we don’t let them stay. However, we did relent and let a goose couple stay. Indeed, we became quite attached to them. That came to a sad ending as I wrote in a short story called "Tale of the Goose" (New Jersey Outdoors, Winter 2000).

Last summer, exactly one year ago, we looked out early one morning and there silhouetted against the pond was a lone buck. He was a magnificent creature, fully plumed with eight-point antlers. Bucks are very skittish and not often seen in the open when humans are nearby. But, there he was, clearly the dominant member of our deer herd, head up at the slightest sound, even those emanating from inside the house, and, as soon as he saw us, he would invariably trot off into the protection of the woods.

He was there all summer, virtually every day. As he became accustomed to seeing us, his dash into the woods became more leisurely. Weeks later on seeing us, he would amble halfway across our front open space, stop, turn towards us, and just stand there for a while before disappearing into the woods. Finally, by the end of the summer, he became so acclimated to us that he would stand at the edge of the pond, still enough for us to take a lot of pictures. He even allowed us to approach as close as 100 feet before he would move away.

Often, he and others of the herd came, uninvited, to share corn I distributed each morning to the ducks. Everybody gets fed, and everybody steals everybody else’s food. The ducks covet the fish food; the deer regard the ducks’ corn as their dessert - even the squirrels, chipmunks, blue jays, and crows get into the act.

We devise all sorts of tricks to try and see that the food gets to those for whom it is intended. But, we really don’t mind all the chaos - it’s part of the Awoffagamme and the Awoffagamme is virtually perfect.

It was in November that it happened. We had not seen the buck for a week or more. We were at breakfast; Barbara was adjusting the plants in the window sill overlooking our backyard that was surrounded by woods.

"Oh my God", she exclaimed.

There was the buck. His antlers had fallen off. That was not surprising. It was his leg that caused Barbara’s agonized exclamation. His left front leg appeared shattered at the mid-shaft; it just flapped, totally useless. He limped slowly and unsteadily towards the protection of the woods.

"He’s been shot", said Barbara. Actually, he probably had not, but whatever the cause, he was severely incapacitated. It appeared likely that, with winter coming, he would not survive. Barbara called the animal warden, who said that, almost certainly, he would fall and break the other leg, assuring a slow, painful death. He offered to send expert marksmen who would try and find the buck and shoot him. He said he hated to do it, and he knew it sounded cruel, but, in point of fact, given the circumstances, it was much kinder. We thought long and hard about that solution. It was so final - and just suppose the game warden was wrong. Just suppose he could manage on three legs. Suppose it was a mild winter and he didn’t fracture his other leg. With his antlers gone, he was less of a target for hunters and, besides, in the area in which we live, very little deer hunting is permitted.

In the end, we made our decision, in large part, on pure emotion. We just could not bring ourselves to authorize somebody to kill him, even though we knew we might be condemning that buck to slow starvation. But, there was another factor in that decision. We had always believed, as do many others, that, with nature and our environment, if you have serious reservations about whether the intervention might make the situation worse, don’t intervene; leave nature alone.

Winter came sooner than usual, and it was more severe than any winter in recent years. There were multiple snowfalls and plenty of ice, and it was heavy snow. We lost more tree branches than we had in the last ten years combined.

December, January, and February were agonizing. We saw the buck almost every day, though occasionally he was not around for a few days or even a week. His leg remained useless, but he seemed to somehow manage on three legs and, surprisingly, even at the end of February, although he had become thinner, he was not emaciated.

When there is snow on the ground, I clear away an area adjacent to our house and put out cracked corn or whole corn kernels for our herd of about thirteen deer. The buck had dominated that herd, but clearly the injury had emboldened the younger bucks. As I cleared the ground and threw a bucket of corn around an area that would suffice for the entire herd, our buck would watch warily. Then, after I started walking away, he would limp down and eat at the fringes of the herd.

I would also clear an area close to the pond and feed the approximately 120 ducks. Sometimes, after they were fed, he, as well as other deer, would finish the little the ducks had left uneaten.

In January, word spread among the area deer population that food was available at the Awoffagamme. That brought unfamiliar deer and a buck with large antlers. Our battered buck was no match for him. Fortunately, deliberate withholding of corn for 48 hours during the next snowfall resulted in the interlopers departure.

February was ice month. After I cleared the ground as well as I could and deposited the corn, the deer would literally slide down an embankment from the woods to feed. Each day as I walked away, I would look back unsure that our wary buck, as always at the back of the pack, would be able to negotiate that embankment without falling and breaking the other leg. But, he needed the food and negotiate the icy embankment he did. That was one tough buck.

Then it was March and still snowy, but with clear signs of spring. He was there each day and, one morning as I watched him limp across the yard, I could not believe what I was seeing.

"Barbara, come quick. He’s putting weight on that leg".

And so he was. It wasn’t much, but, ever so gingerly, he was putting a little weight on what still appeared to be a flail leg. Thereafter, almost weekly, you could see him put a little more weight on that leg until, by early June, the three-legged deer was a four-legged deer with a decreasing limp and a firm swelling indicating healing at the midway point where the break had occurred.

As his physical abilities increased, apparently so did his feelings of safety and confidence and his skittishness decreased. Once again, he clearly dominated the herd and no male inside or outside his own group challenged that dominance.

In June, we always see less of our small herd; there is plenty of food and they tend to stay in the woods, eating and waiting patiently to pounce on any unprotected flowers and vegetables we plant.

We got occasional glimpses of our buck, but nothing more. That year, spring and summer were particularly lovely, abetted by plentiful rain. It was early in July that I saw him trot across our front lawn to the edge of the pond with only an almost imperceptible limp. Barbara and I went out to get a good look at him, walking to within about 30 feet before he even bothered to look up. Then, he raised his head, we stopped, and the three of us stood - silent, staring.

There he was, once again, fully antlered - tough, resilient, proud. We must have stood there gazing at each other for at least a minute. He never moved, nor did we. We said nothing. But, we didn’t have to. We had followed the admonition of non-intervention if the intervention could make the situation worse. We had let nature take its course and, almost miraculously, it had turned out well; and, we knew that, once again, everything was alright at the Awoffagamme - and that means virtually perfect.