If perceptive, you pay attention to what’s going on around you and, in the process, life proves interesting as you poke and prod for enlightening information that helps form your conception of place and where you fit.

Since moving to Greenfield at the end of the last millennium, I must admit I’ve become more fine-tuned with nature and wildlife, not because my interest has intensified but rather because I’m closer to it, nestled into the back corner of Greenfield, snuggled up to a brook and gorge mouth at the base of the first step to the Berkshire hills. The country setting lends itself to many more wildlife sightings than my previous home in South Deerfield village, even dating back to that neighborhood’s pre-development days of my boyhood. I could count on one hand my deer sightings from that property I grew up on, then owned, and I never saw the bears or wild turkeys that are now fairly common sights in my daily travels; not to mention the skunks, the possum and raccoons that seek out my barn, sheds and the crawl spaces below for shelter. They often eat from my cats’ skillet as owls hoot from the forest’s edge or eagles soar in the infinite blue sky. Great environment.

I will never forget one late afternoon this century when I was out in the woodshed and heard my son screaming out as though alarmed, like the place was afire. Not so. Just a large, silky-black bruin eating apples under a tree at the foot of my driveway. Aware that we were watching, it sauntered off across the road to a field behind a neighbor’s house. Another time, the same son was almost as excited to point out a majestic bald eagle perched in a tall white pine overlooking our common, an unexpected terrace treat.

What I most enjoy studying, though, is white-tail deer, particularly in the spring and summer, when the does drop and raise fawns, and bucks sprout velvety antlers. I find it fascinating to monitor the habits of these smart and noble beasts, learning about territory and diet, protection of young, whatever, as I patrol the upland roads on daily drives with my dogs and sometimes passengers.

Recently, my fancy has been a doe I’ve watched since early spring on a splendid sliver of Franklin County paradise no more than a quarter-mile square. I first caught her feeding evenings with three to five others in a March-brown but greening hayfield, backdropped by southern Vermont’s crowded gumdrop hills. By strawberry season the hay had grown high enough to conceal more than half their bodies, and I’d peer for frozen heads and ears. Then the hay was cut, the sightings easier. So, I have seen this animal several times, usually tight to the wood line, head down, grazing on fresh green growth stimulated by morning dew and spring rain. I occasionally even put the binoculars on her and knew from her skinny face and thin profile that she was a doe in the 110-pound range.

What stroked my curiosity most in June was the potential of nearby fawns, because I knew such a healthy animal living in a dairy habitat should have given birth to at least one. After a week or two of searching for little ones I bumped into a member of the farm family that had harvested the hayfield and asked if he had participated. If so, had he seen the pathetic remains of fawns on the scalped, stubbly field. If not, had his brothers spoken of unfortunate carnage. The answer was no on both counts. Better still, he was sure he would have heard of such mortality because it’s a subject routinely discussed. Farmers of this mechanized era cannot eliminate occasional fawn-kills during first cut, but it’s equally true that they try to avoid it. The problem is that the helpless little ones are invisible as they lay totally still in nests where their mothers leave them. This year a long wet June delayed haying on many fields until after Independence Day, ideal for fawn survival.

Not more than two days after our short, pleasant conversation under the cool, damp shade of a tall pine grove, I was returning home from running my dogs when I saw the doe in her typical place along the wood line, head down, tail flicking nervously. I thought I spotted movement behind her, slowed down to reach for my field glasses to take a closer look and, sure enough, spotted, spindly legged twins, body-mass smaller than my Springer Spaniels. Their mother picked up her head and stood tall as a preacher, facing me from some 150 yards away. Then she must have given the fawns an audible warning signal, because they both scampered into the woods and stood out of sight behind the low vegetation as the doe stood motionless, ears alert, nose expanding and contracting, in a calendar pose. I moved along, not wanting to disturb supper. But I was pleased. Finally a sighting. The little ones had appeared before dark.

Although I have not seen the precious caramel twins since, I have twice bumped into their mother in an adjacent hollow, maybe 350 yards down the hill, near a burial ground. The first time I saw her, sunny midmorning, it caught me by total surprise. I was dropping my pickup’s tailgate to release my dogs into the wetland below when something caught my eye and there she stood, motionless, 15 feet below me. She stared at me, I at her and she trotted off in no great hurry through the pines where I had spoken to the farmer. Hmmmmm, I wondered, big healthy doe, probably the same one, skinny face, but no fawns? They should have been big enough by then to tail along, but she gave no indication they were with her.

A day or two later, I bumped into the neighbor, originally from Ashfield, and we chatted. Had he seen the doe around? Yes. How about little ones? No, but he had seen the doe several times, crossing the road, in his yard, never little ones. He figured she left them bedded in the swamp before going off. I believed him. Made perfect sense.

For a few days after that, no sign of the doe or fawns, but I knew they weren’t far. Then, Sunday evening, right at the site where I had bumped face-to-face into the mother, I backed my truck up to the lip overlooking the small wetland, exited the vehicle, dropped the tailgate, released my three dogs, and a telltale sound greeted us.

”Whew! … Whew!” A deer blew her piercing warning signal, followed by heavy rustling in the woods. Then farther away, ”Whew! … Whew!” two more powerful exhales. The dogs froze facing the sound, ears perked, noses high, vigilant. They knew what it was. So did I.

I returned to the scene Monday morning to exercise my pets. Then, on a departure whim, I took a left instead of the right homeward and pulled into my northern neighbor’s long driveway. His red truck was in the field out back, his wife’s maroon SUV parked by the back door. I spun around the uphill horseshoe toward the SUV and it started to roll, so I exited my vehicle and approached hers. The brake lights shone, her door opened. She hadn’t noticed me approaching.

We exchanged brief pleasantries and I asked her if she had seen the doe with little ones? Yes, two of them. They’d been in her yard several times in recent days. It didn’t surprise me. In fact, I was expecting it.

Just as I had thought, the doe had blown her warning the previous evening to alert her fawns of danger. Instinct confirmed. It’s the kind of stuff that makes life interesting: observation and assessment, interaction with others, spinning the fine-toothed wheels of discovery and imagination.

Some choose the chapel, others the pagoda, but for me nature, place and perspective stitch it all together. It’s all I need to know, a brilliant tapestry, intricate and dynamic … a path to why.

A while back during that invigorating January thaw, shady midday thermometer creeping toward 60, my hunting buddy and I decided to poke along through our tranquil northern hills, just looking for stuff. We weren’t far from Vermont, and the roads and bare southern exposures had the soggy suggestion of our northern neighbor in April, premature mud season in a northern Franklin County hilltown.

I had to drop my aging Toyota pickup into 4-wheel to get through one uphill rut-hole before taking a right, down a dead end, to check an orchard. Sure enough, a doe feeding on apples. She picked up her head, froze, looked straight at the vehicle and bound off as I banged a U-ie. Then we headed up the road to what had appeared all fall and early winter to be a worn, unoccupied Federal farmhouse at the dirt-road T. Come to find out, it wasn’t vacant a’tall, judging from the burly, gray-haired, coverall-clad man loading cordwood into the bucket on the front of his tractor. Good day to drop a few loads of wood through the cellar window to the furnace.

Curious and congenial under the spell of false spring, I hit the brakes, came to a stop, backed up a bit, nosed into the gravel driveway behind the tractor, departed the truck, and walked around the tractor to shoot the breeze. We wanted to chat with the man who owns the hills we sometimes hunt, has manicured them for a lifetime and, in the vernacular, knows them like the back of his hand.

We introduced ourselves and got right into it, meandering from subject to subject like a meadow brook flowing from riffle to corner pool. We talked about the land, old roads, streams and pastures; neighbors, history and family; immersed ourselves in good old-fashioned backcountry conversation stimulated by the same balmy air that had undoubtedly drawn the man to his chore.

Affable, the man imparted wisdom with a Yankee twang reminiscent of my late aunt Gladys, a spinster born before the turn of the 20th century. He wasn’t that old. Not even close. But he spoke the tongue of old-time rural New England, a charming dialect I’m quite familiar with, and happen to adore.

When we got onto the subject of deer, his interest rose like a flapjack on a hot griddle, bacon fat, of course. He didn’t care what the experts said, there aren’t the deer there used to be when he and his hunting party always had 12 hanging in the downhill shed by the third day of shotgun season, salubrious winter fare to fatten the family freezer. Then, 10 years ago, the deer disappeared. It’s improved a bit the past few years. The deer are coming back. But still, nothing like the old days.

Bears? Well, that’s another story. The man never saw a bear the first 50 years on his peaceful upland farm. Times have changed. Now they’re common. Turkeys, too. They showed up in the ’70s and have spread like multiflora rose ever since. Even moose have migrated south and taken residence, no longer a rare sight. But there aren’t the deer there once were regardless of what you read in the paper.

I took heed. You can’t beat straight talk from an old-time hilltown agronomist with no hidden agenda, or reason to fib. He was just telling it like it is, like it was, like the wildlife-science Ph.D. drawing a fat government paycheck doesn’t want to hear it. I know who to believe, and it ain’t the guy who stayed up all night in some barren, windowless corner to memorize facts, ace multiple-choice exams and get that piece of paper worthy of a giltwood frame, often fools’ gold.

Our conversation drifted to the economy, the cost of living, the price of cordwood. The farmer remembered when a cord went for 15 bucks. Now some are getting 200 and a friend says he can’t make a living at that price, which didn’t make much sense to him. He believed he could make a living at $200. But then, thinking on his feet, he quickly pulled it all into perspective. Simple math told him 100 cords would bring $20,000. Where does that get you today? Not far with the price of gas and heating oil; milk, bread, eggs and cheese, the staples. He delved deeper, figuring those fancy-pants city slickers making $100,000 a year could make a comfortable go of it. But there’s no one making that in his tiny world. Not even close, except maybe lurking real estate men.

That’s when I interjected with some flatland logic. I tried to tell him 100,000 bucks doesn’t get a family where it once did, not with a mortgage, two cars, bills, bills, bills. Even with two paychecks and a supplemental income, you fight to get by, living from check to check trying to feed and clothe the kids, keep them away from the dirty, dreadful, decaying dropout factories, a step or two away from the sparkling hilltop jail.

Bemused, he looked at me through a sun-splashed squint that suggested disagreement. Huh? Can’t make a go of it on $100,000? Must be those people don’t know how to add water to their oatmeal.

Wow!

That comment hit me like lilac scent wafting through the porch in a soft, warm breeze. Country wisdom is what they call it. Homespun stuff, better than anything you can learn from a book, or at the county jail. Maybe someone ought to explain that to the judge sentencing a harmless pothead.

We bade each other farewell before my friend and I headed for the truck to continue our ride to the ridge behind the man’s northern line. As we descended toward his lower meadow and climbed the dirt road to a neighbor’s farmstead — muddy driveway, cordwood stacked neatly, faded red sheds and barns, jagged driftwood gray along the bottom — I wanted to discuss the insightful barnyard conversation that had just transpired on the crest of that gentle hill overlooking the faraway fertile valley. I hoped my companion had appreciated as much as I our short, pleasant visit.

This hilltown squire — maybe a high school grad, perhaps not, but does it really matter — isolated in a slice of paradise known as upper Franklin County, had oozed wisdom you can’t buy at the academy. He knew exactly who he was and understood that profound sense of place formed by generations of continuous inhabitance. He could show you all his boundaries, the ancient corners, every rusty barbed-wire snare concealed on the forest floor; all the ancient hardwoods, outcroppings and boulders, the landmarks, the bubbling springs to sample and not.

Developers won’t destroy his family’s jewel, built on blood and sweat and thrifty Yankee acumen. Not a chance. He’s already taken care of that.

Sure, he likely votes the law-and-order ticket and believes in its bogeymen. But don’t expect to find him sitting at a cheesy, plastic, Wal-Mart table chawin’ on cheese dawgs, tubed filth scraped from a slaughterhouse floor. He knows better. What’d those Waltons ever do for him?

Sadly, the man’s a dying breed, vanishing from our landscape like the majestic elms and the dairies they sheltered in summer shade. When he and his ilk are gone, what’ll be left? A troubling thought; troubling indeed. Our foundation is crumbling, caving to the center. All that’ll be left is mossy rubble in a sunken depression.

Not a pleasant thought.

Horrid, in fact.