A Winter’s Night
Red Foxes
Anticipating a storm, I spent the afternoon finding old snow shovels and gathering sand. Others I know frantically shop for food and quickly ready plows on their pickups. Still others back their cars up close to the front door for a running start to the road.
But this evening, as the snow covers our house, I was caught thinking past the chairs with blankets and the TV and the books to the lives just outside in the cold.
To the chickadees huddled in tree cavities, shivering. To the foxes moving step into step, using a process called direct registration, saving energy as their back foot steps to where the front foot was. To the feral cat huddled near a post in the barn, claiming a space where the mice often play, both honoring a peace between predator and prey, waiting so patiently in the quiet imposed. The silence broken only by the wind blowing drifts into "pillows of wind throw" formed around grasses and trees, offering shelter to mammals while their hunters go starving above.
The storm ended by morning. I rolled up the shades to a blast of cold air and to layers upon layers of the purest of white, sparkling like diamonds in the sun's first light.