I’m looking down, my eyes following the milky-white globes of air trapped in the creaking ice beneath my feet, when I feel the presence of another animal nearby. There, calm and motionless, in the flat light of a winter morning stands a fallow deer buck sheltering under an arching canvas of holly foliage.

Although looking straight towards me, he seems to be transfixed with other thoughts and there is not the slightest flicker of fear or apprehension across his face.

I’m heading for work having decided to walk there and, until this moment, I’ve been striding purposefully across the firm frosted ground fixed on my progress. I’m nearly at the office, on Taylor’s Ride tucked in a fold below the busy Epping New Road. In the Forest, however, everything is still.

I might have chosen to stop here to listen for birds or look at the trees and still remained caught up in thoughts and distractions. But this shared gaze with a wild creature transforms the moment into something more profound. Then the buck flicks its head to watch a pair of bullfinches flit through the thorns nearby. The deer turns its head back.

Suddenly we are both released from our trance. It bounds away flicking its tail. I turn and step back into real time.

Dr Jeremy Dagley is the City of London’s head of conservation at Epping Forest.