Barefoot Laureate: Day of the desert fox

This morning while walking our small patch of desert out back, I caught sight of a fox on the other side of the arroyo. If not for the snow, I probably wouldn’t have been able to see her at all. 

I watched as she went from a casual trot to a sudden hunting stance. 

She crouched, holding still for a moment before charging full speed toward a ground critter a few outstretched lengths away. 

With a mouthful of something clenched in teeth, she spun around and headed back toward where she’d come. 

When the spinning world 

reminds me 

the wild isn’t something

inferred, 

and the earth 

isn’t just a word,

I find myself

a little less blurred,

a little more awake

a little more 

deeply stirred, 

a curiously 

curious

child of the world. 

Encounters with wildlife always seem to wake me up. I’m suddenly aware of where I am: at the edge of the arroyo, at the foot of a mesa, on a spinning watery planet—the sky all around pitched a deep blue. 

It’s mid-winter and because coyotes have moved on for the time being, foxes are about. 

A couple of weeks ago, while walking Lady, our dog, down in the bottom of the ravine, she got fixated on something in the scrub. She wouldn’t come when I called. I was getting a little nervous, recalling the lion tracks I’d seen earlier in the mud on the north side of the house. 

I stood to the side, on the dirt path and watched as Lady cautiously nosed her way into a patch of greasewood. A piercing snarl from within sent her running back towards me. 

That did not sound like a mountain lion. It sounded like a fox. 

I could have been wrong. 

The fox is 

a slender little prism,

rarely 

conspicuous, 

always 

adaptable, 

and sometimes

fiercely 

ambiguous. 

This morning I saw a fox, but more often than not, the fox is watching me. The fox and humans have actually been keeping an eye on one another for a very long time, not quite as rivals, but as parallel intelligences moving through all kinds of landscapes. 

In cognitive studies, foxes demonstrate problem-solving abilities comparable to our domestic dogs, though with less dependence on social cues. Here in the high desert, foxes are solo strategists. 

In urban settings, though, they share territory and food sources much more readily. 

It has been observed that urban foxes quickly learn human schedules, traffic rhythms and precisely when the garbage gets taken out. 

Featured in fairy tales and often as a cautionary tale, the fox has always lived at the edge of the human story. He appears at dusk, when vision and certainty softens. Legend cast the fox as trickster, thief, shapeshifter—an animal that understands the ways of the world well enough to go largely unnoticed. 

And what elegant, agile creatures they are. 

Last year I spotted 

a fox moving 

among 

the columbine

and couldn’t help note

for a canine, 

the fox

is awfully feline. 

Across Indigenous cultures, the concept of spirit animals, or totems, describes a living system of relationship between animals and humans. These animals are not considered mascots or symbols assigned at birth, nor are they metaphors. 

Rather, these animals are understood as forms of intelligence, offering guidance and ethical instruction. In this world view, animals are elders, carrying knowledge shaped by deep time. 

A spirit animal’s arrival signals a call to responsibility. To be guided by Bear, Wolf, Eagle, Fox or Snake is to be taught when to be fierce, when to adapt, when to pay closer attention, when to shed an old skin. And who doesn't need reminders of those things? 

A Whole Lotta Critters Goin’ On

It’s said a snake will die if she cannot 

shed her skin. Perhaps the grizzly isn’t 

exactly what you think. It seems to me 

coyote knows where you have been, 

the elk is masculinity, the beaver’s life 

is industry. The trout is hardly made 

of steel. The elephant, the elephant 

is what you feel. The fox is a creature 

who’s quick on his feet. The funnel spider 

weaves and weaves and weaves and then

retreats. How strange and how strangely sweet; 

this earth is where we’ve all convened. 

The moose is bulk and scrutiny. 

The lizard is all about the warmth 

of the stone. I’ve come to think no critter 

lives her life alone. The common rat 

is multiplicity, the turtle is surely

immortality—and vaguely 

the raven knows the kind of song you’ve come 

to sing. The honeybee is jazz and blues.

The catamount knows it’s we who 

are closing in. The eagle is in the news, 

the octopus remembers you. The falcon is 

adrenalin, the whale: some kind 

of guardian, the wolverine 

will chuff and wheeze. 

The human is student to all of these. 

The doe is born of a minor chord, a swarm 

of gnats is an arabesque, the scorpion

 is the queen of swords. The javelina 

is the shape of war, the tadpole is 

the sign of change, the horse 

has the largest heart of all. 

It’s hard to know exactly where you are 

without some kind of guiding star.   

Wendy Videlock lives in Palisade. Her essays and poems appear in O Magazine, The New York Times, Hudson Review, Poetry and Best American Poetry. Her books are available wherever books are sold. She currently serves as poet laureate of the Western Slope. Find out more at WendyVidelock.