Fog and Fox

Still blanketed in fog here, as earlier in the week – but today feels so different.  I’ve shut out the damp, cloudy feeling and I’m getting close and personal with a fox.

I’m thinking of Jim Crumley and his book Encounters in the Wild – Fox  as he writes so exceptionally about meeting foxes.

‘There was a face looking at me.  It was the colour of autumn and snow.  Its eyes were smouldery gold.  Its ears were tall and wide for the size of the face.  The fur on its narrow forehead and between its ears stood on end, but lay sleekly aslant on its cheeks, and that was the autumn of the face.  From the black tip of the nose, a band of bright white travelled back the full length of the face, and that was the snow of the face.  It was the face of a fox, a vixen I guessed, alluringly beautiful, entrancingly wild.’

I’m imagining this one is peeping from its den in a cairn of rocks, checking all is clear to emerge from the hole, it is coming out to feed.  Fox cubs are born in April, grey furred and blind they are totally reliant on their mother.