We’ll see how long my resolve to write here more holds up as it is back to work today. Just to report in this morning that I saw two more foxes yesterday, mid-afternoon, in another location entirely. The pair dashed across a road and were quickly lost from sight in the woods. From what I have read, fox begin to pair up in December and mate in January and February, hunting together, day and night, while searching out a birthing den. I have also read that the fox and the coyote respect one another’s territory. If you see a fox there will be no coyote in the neighborhood- its range is 1.5 square miles compared to the coyote’s 20-50 square miles. The coyote track I saw the other day was about 1.5 miles away from our cottage.

We have not seen a coyote here by the pond in several years. Every spring, when they have given birth, we often hear their high-pitched frenzied howling from a nearby bog of an evening, evidently when a catch is returned to the den. It is not a pleasant sound to the human ear, nor our canine’s. There has been a fox in our closer environs for the past two years and I wonder now if their population is on the rise or if they have simply staked out a new territory for themselves. They seem less menacing somehow.

The temperature this morning has climbed to 16 degrees but the sun is warming our southern exposure nicely. The strong winds have cleared much of the ice where the ducks and geese gather. The wood duck is among them at last though his mate is not. How is it that they came to winter over when they should have gone south? I am drawn to their stories though I will never know them. Each day there seems to be a new hardship followed by a reprieve. And there is a certainty to that ebb and flow that I have learned a certain forbearance from.