All is well this New Year as viewed from my back window. Several female mule deer (AKA does) and yearlings are bedded down and contentedly chewing their cud as they’ve done pretty much year-round for the decade or so I’ve lived here. It may not be politically correct, but I call them the “girls,” and I depend on seeing them and worry where they are if I don’t.

I can’t say all my neighbors feel the same. Some wonder about a deer population explosion in our suburb and how long it will be before the mountain lions follow them into our backyards and chaos reigns.

There’s quiet talk of a suburban bow hunting season, which are legal in a few Front Range communities and are more common in East Coast communities that feel overwhelmed with white-tail deer.

Other solutions range from government hunters thinning out deer populations to darting them with birth control medicine.

I understand some of the reasoning behind these measures and the damage deer can do. All I can say for certain is deer love tulips, and if you do too, don’t plant them unless you have a fence around them. Try daffodils for unfenced areas, which the deer seem less likely to eat.

It doesn’t end at the girls contentedly chewing their cud in my backyard, either. The rut just ended a month or so ago, and they did invite a few visitors. The same bucks show up most years. One has an antler tine that points down toward his eye, another is gimpy on the right front leg. I figure each year will be his last, but then he hobbles back again the next year.

There are always a few young bucks that float around the outskirts of the mating dance trying to sneak in if they can, but all it takes is a sidelong glance from one of the big bucks to deter them. Although I can’t prove it by observation, I suspect a few young bucks do make friends with the occasional doe, if only in the cause of genetic diversity. All of it is part of the cycle I’m privileged to witness each year, and with any luck the girls will be showing off their new fawns come early summer.

I can’t say I have named individual does like some researchers do with their wild subjects, but I know who’s who when I see them. Wildlife biologists say the average lifespan of a mule deer doe is nine-11 years in the wild, which means a few of these does I’m seeing may have been here as long as I have.

Keeping track of the girls just comes naturally to me. What else could I do? They’re outside my back window 50% or 60% of the time I look out there, and I’m curious about them. They’re also curious about me. Most mornings, I practice my version of tai chi on my patio and often have one of the girls closely watching me with a “what’s he doing, now” expression on her face.

My attempts at a quiet unity with the natural world spills over into the almost daily hikes I take in a nearby open space. There was a time when I could identify many of the plants by common names and their genus and species thanks to the tutelage of University of Colorado professor Erik Bonde’s summer field trip class on the Flowering Plants of Colorado. My alternative motive in those back-to-Earth 1970s days when I studied with Dr. Bonde was to pay particular attention to the edible plants of Colorado. I was convinced at the time that I’d be living in tepee, foraging for edible plants and hunting buffalo.

I remember very few common names for Colorado plants nowadays and even fewer scientific names, but I do recognize many of the plants when I see them in the field. I’ll know one as a good-to-eat springtime pot herb or that another was sometimes used to scour pots. When I see them now, it’s like running into an old friend on the trail whose name I can’t remember but nonetheless recognize.

I’m not much for making New Year’s resolutions, but I will express the gratitude I feel every time I see the girls out my back window or reacquaint myself with my other outdoor friends along the trail whose names I may not know but am happy to see again.

Best wishes to you for a happy, healthy and outdoor New Year.