Fire and Foxes

It’s the perfect day for a fire. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the cold and stillness of winter. I know it’s not quite winter yet, but the cold and snow have hit here pretty hard already. So, I’ve been outside a lot and enjoying the ability to comfortably have a fire again. A fire isn’t even enjoyable for me unless it’s legitimately cold, and we recently had this surge of what I refer to as “mysterious ambient heat”. It’s a misplaced warmth you feel even when it looks cold on paper. So it was about 40 degrees several days ago and raining, but felt so much warmer. Like in the 60s. I was driving with the windows cracked and my button-up shirt completely unbuttoned. Wondering if something was vaguely wrong with me until I stopped to get gas and saw a guy wearing shorts. I thought, “Nope. He’s feeling it too.” It’s an odd thing.

Today though, the cold has a bite at about 23 degrees, to where the heat of the fire is welcome. The snow has been frequent. I’ve had more days off than usual this week, so I’ve been doing more of the things I’d rather be doing. Throwing axes. Building fires. Walking through the woods. I’ve gone back to having my coffee outside, as I detest drinking hot coffee outside in hot weather. Now the cold can whip around my face as the coffee warms it, which feels the way it’s supposed to be. The deer and fox have been visiting the snow-clad field in front of my place, along with the constant presence of the crows, and it soothes my often aching soul.

I’ve noticed foxes have become a more prevalent presence in my mind the second half of this year, and I don’t even know why or what it means. More in a spiritual way than before. I’ve always been fond of them, but they’ve begun appearing in some of my dreams and thoughts when I do certain rituals now. The dreams in which they appear tend to be laced with this overwhelming sadness, but a sadness I want to remain in and seek out intentionally. I’m trying desperately to follow this fox into places where I’m just too large to fit, but I keep trying, as if I could make myself smaller through the sheer effort. I’ve had three of these dreams, typically somewhere in the vicinity of a full moon, and in all of them I’m unable to discern what the fox wants from me if anything at all. She looks back at me, because I always have the sense she’s female, and she looks into my eyes. Then she’s running again. I can never tell if she wants me to follow or not, yet I do every time. And I never catch up to her.

In that way, they represent for me a culmination of delicate beauty, loss, and melancholy, which is different from what other animals connected to me spiritually represent. Which is probably odd to some, because I think the fox tends to represent more themes of guile or mischief. Not that I don’t feel they represent that as well. They do, but for me they represent something deeper. This idea that something truly beautiful is so often a fleeting, yet vividly memorable thing. The kind of thing that plagues your thoughts when you’re half asleep, but appears boldly. Without any thought of an apology. Bright as the coat of the fox darting across a field covered in snow. The red against the white burns into your head and you can’t remove it. Ever. You’re not going to forget what that looked and felt like to experience it, and you find yourself longing like fuck for it. Hoping to see it again, and even if you don’t, the longing itself becomes the companion. Something you would rather not do without even when it salts the wound.