Snow Falling and Foxes Leaping in Thin Air
by rebecca ~ January 18th, 2006. Filed under: Ordinary Miracles.
(Wikipedia. Copyright from creative commons, but link’s dead!)
Snow falling, falling on the fields, the trees, the streets, on the sculpture of a nude woman in bolero hat. Her hat transformed into a dramatic puff of a Russian Silver Fox hat, her melting blue copper limbs lined above with the white fur of fresh snow.
I didn’t have a chance this winter season to sing my ode to snow until today. A bitter, dry cold spell stretched on and on, and the snow on the ground hardened and turned unforgiving, no longer a joy to shovel. The snowflakes remained trapped in the tight fists of blue skies, waiting for the moister, warmer breath to release the gift of snow. Now it falls in those long feathery sighs I love…
My husband believes a fox has moved into the veranda below us. He has spotted her red body out in the field out back, and he has seen footprints leading up to the veranda and suddenly the prints end.
Foxes in Japan, called kitsune, get a mixed reception. They are seen as tricksters, as messengers of the rice gods, shape-shifters, usually entering the bodies of women, especially through the breast or fingernails, or so I’ve read. For the Ainu, the fox, like all things on earth, be it rock, plant, or animal, is a god from the other world who has come to see how humans are behaving, to walk among us, and if we deserve it, the fox may leave us with some fur before traveling back to be with the other spirits.
I am entranced with the beauty and dignity of foxes, their solitary ways, how they stop along the edge of the field with their elegant long legs and stare directly into my eyes as I pass on my bicycle or in my car. They seem to know what we humans are all about, and they don’t fear us, as perhaps they should….
I am sad that some of their homelands, the open fields around our building, have been shorn and paved, with cement foundations then poured for those square pre-fab homes, whose bulking forms appear within days. Instant neighborhoods. It is not surprising to me that a fox might have decided the abandoned veranda below us as the better option. I hope the quarters are cozy and pleasant.
My husband, along with Watanabe-san on the first floor, has the habit of tossing rice and bread scraps to the crows and other creatures in our field, so perhaps this is another pragmatic reason, besides the shrinking habitat and my admiration for their amber silhouettes, to elect to be our neighbor. Let’s hope the snowy field behind us remains wild, free to be as it is for the fleet feet of our new neighbor.