This morning, in the midst of my routine and sleepwalking life, was a truly unexpected moment. I was travelling my morning commute (the sans husband one, sadly). I was passing the Wyoming graveyard, which is large and low, and sometimes misty in the mornings. This morning it was pale in filtered morning sunlight, with iced-over snow between marble tombstones. I was passing between it’s high stone walls and a strip of houses backed between graveyard and gray cliff this morning, when I saw low movement. I braked, so as not to hit whatever it was. And there, 7 miles from the center of Boston, in the quiet urban landscape between rowhomes and tombstones, walked a red fox. His tail was bushy. He looked energetic and cheerful, crossing in front of me. Against the paleness of the morning, he was brightly and vividly red.
How does this fox come to find a home in the midst of thick habitations? Does he make his living on pets incautiously let outdoors? Is he on some journey, headed towards less and less hospitable lands? Why was I given to see him in this time between Solstice and Christmas?
There are rational answers for all, but I do not feel the siren call of rationality. To the opposite, right now I yearn for mystery and nature, the unknown and unknowable, for purpose and intent in the universe without my necessarily needing to know what that purpose is.
And today, this morning, I saw a red fox in the Wyoming graveyard, beshrouded in snow.
My Truant Pen 