THE FOX

rOOTS • tRUTHS FROM AN UNEXPECTED ANGLE • cABERNET SAUVIGNON

We could call this a modern fable. About nature and love and anger and hope. Classic stuff. Or we could call it, and that might be a more precise description, a short story, starring a not too sober fox, giving a lecture on the heart of sustainability. Not so classic. Now you know. Still, given these hints, we believe The Fox will surprise you. And make you laugh and give you food for thought for a long time. Let it stay with you or eat it raw and return to digest whenever you’re ready.

INFO:

Listen to it (25 minutes) or read it. We recommend listening to the fox’s lecture.

Chapters: 6

Fox lecture: 1

Number of exercises: 6

Food for thought: Abundant

Relevance in general: This is about our roots and our future. The Fox sneaks into the essence of sustainability and talks about it as a matter of love and potential. If you are tired of sustainability being reduced to technical, scientific matters, as if it were a question of numbers, this might inspire you. In any case, it’s a great story with quite a twist towards the ending.

Professional relevance: If you represent a private company, a council, an institution or organization with sustainability on the agenda, consider including a session with The Fox. It might open new perspectives, sharpen your values, understand other people’s perception, and make you adjust your communication and/or goals. If you aren’t ready to dive deeper, just turn around, and leave the fox alone.

MORE: Sustainability is a new word for what our ancestors knew all the time; that everything is connected and that we must care for all living things. Do you know what the Native Americans construe as The Land of the Living Dead (a 1-minute read)? In the mood for another fable (or maybe a faitytale?), read The Apple Tree, written by Steven Moe. It might heal something within you.

CHAPTER 1

The road feels longer. Or maybe I’ve just gotten older. I used to know every bush and crooked branch, every rabbit hole and crow’s nest, even by dusk when most things fall out of shape; at least they do out here. It’s more of a dirt path than a road, overgrown by trees and flooded by the brook halfway between the town and my mother’s cabin. We moved to the cabin after my father’s death. The two of us, my mother and me, looking for something to replace sorrow. I walked to school in the early mornings, and as I grew older, I hung around in town until it was too late to make it back home. I slept on couches, on floors, in people’s basements, with boyfriends, on dusty mattresses. We didn’t have a phone in the cabin, and my mother must have been sick with worry. I never bothered to ask. Now it’s just me.

Eventually my mother had a phone installed, and later she bought a cellphone. That’s how we communicated when I moved out, by phone, and I always imagined her sitting on the porch that my father built before his hands began shaking. The wind in the grass, the rooks in the pines, the sound of a car picking up speed further down the road. She settled in and found a job as an accountant in a small company shipping kitchen supply from the Far East. That was one of my father’s expressions, the Far East. She could have moved back to town if she wanted to, but she stayed in the cabin and seemed to enjoy life in her own silent way. She had her kitchen garden, she had a chicken coop, she knew where to find wild apples and blueberries. Even though the cabin had been in my father’s family for generations, it became hers, and she told me of the February storms with falling trees and of the blue June nights with mist rising from the lakes. She told me of her life, and I hardly listened. I was building my own existence, and I didn’t hear how she became short of breath, how she struggled to pronounce certain words. I just imagined her on the porch, coffee mug by her side and chickens lazing in the dust. I imagined that our situation was permanent, that time was our ally.

Then she had the scan, and it was only weeks later that she told me of her condition. She was in hospital by then. I made it back, and we spent days talking, and the last thing she said was that she missed her cabin.

Her cabin. How can it ever be anything else? What am I to do with it?

It’s October, light already fading. I used to love this month with its smell of distant summer and of life finding new forms. Leaves falling, furs getting thicker and warmer. I remember sitting on the porch as a deer slowly approached the house. My mother was there, too. It was just after we moved to the cabin, and I had decided not to speak to her. The deer approached us as we sat on the porch, and the grass looked stiff and rough, still white after the freezing night. “It’s wounded,” my mother whispered. “And it’s not yet hunting season.”

The deer shook its head, violently as if woken from sleep, and ran away. There was blood on the ground. Not much, just a few drops. I dreamt of the deer that night; I dreamt of the forest preparing itself for winter, turning hard and remorseless. I dreamt of things that scared me, like abandoning the road and wandering into the wild. Of becoming nature, of thick winter fur growing on my hands and legs. I woke up and shook my head like the deer, violently. The trees swayed in the wind.

That was the autumn I decided never to let anyone love me again.

I follow the road, and tonight I’ll sleep in the cabin.

It’s not my cabin.

It’s my mother’s.

It will never be mine.

CHAPTER 2

Before my father died, we only visited the cabin in weekends and on holidays. The three of us. It was built by my great-grandfather and used to be a hunting cabin. My father worked as a salesman and wasn’t much of a hunter. He preferred sitting on the porch with my mother and just staying quiet. He sold cars, then property investments, then all kinds of farming machines. Not tractors, but smaller ones. I had the impression that he wasn’t much of a salesman. He preferred silence to talk, and he preferred the cabin to our small house in town with its sickly yellow lawn, the grim supermarket, and the ever-smiling neighbors. We didn’t smile much in our family, but we had fun, and my father had his expressions that made us all laugh. Like “siesta”. He would always insist on his siesta on the porch, and I sat silently beside him as he slept through the afternoon.

Some evenings my father talked of moving to the cabin for good, the three of us. This was in his final years when he sold farming machines. Or tried selling them. He would sit in the kitchen in our house in town with his salesman tie loosened and oil stains on his shirt, and he would talk of fruit trees and kitchen gardens, of fishing rods and chicken coops; he would talk of picking up hunting like the men in his family before him. “You’ll end up hurting yourself,” my mother said, “and the animals will have a laugh.” Then came more talk, but he never moved to the cabin. Instead, he drove to the machine showroom and the farmer conventions with oil stains rubbed deep into his shirts, and he finally received a bottle of Spanish red wine and a diploma saying “Seller of the month” when the shaking got so bad that he was laid off. He hated red wine.

“It’ll be better,” he told us as we prepared for what would be our final weekend in the cabin. “We’ll take care of ourselves and live off the land. Wait and see. It’ll be fun.”

I never knew if my mother shared my father’s dreams, but she was the one making them real. She turned the old playhouse into a chicken coop, she fenced in the orchard, she learned how to fish, she became friendly with the neighbors and bartered her way through the first winter. I don’t know why she did it. She didn’t have to. We had some money from my father’s insurance and her job with the shipping company. Somehow, she must have enjoyed it. One evening she hung my father’s diploma on the wall beside the fireplace, and then we couldn’t help laughing. The two of us. After that I gave up my silence.

CHAPTER 3

I wake up before sunrise. The air is damp and cold. This used to be my room, and my mother kept it as I left it. Did she wish for me to return? If so, she never told me. Would I have listened if she did? The bed is short, the mattress hard and uneven. It’s a child’s bed, but it will have to do for the nights to come. The realtor will arrive two days from now. Everything must be in place by then. I met the realtor in town before coming out here. She seemed nice. She had known my mother. She paid her condolences and offered her assistance. My father would have called her a nice and professional lady.

The realtor asked me about my wishes. What do I wish for? I wish for her to somehow handle this, to be professional, to do the talking and send me the check when it’s over. I’ve never asked to inherit my parents’ dream.

I make coffee and open the windows. Water has softened the timber over time. My father’s diploma has become yellow and stained in its cheap frame. I find my mother’s jacket and open the porch door. The moon is still up, pale and cold above the trees. The porch faces south and has a view over the valley, all the way to the stretch of highway and neighboring towns. When we moved out here, the valley was a wilderness of fir, spruce, and birch, but the land became valuable as they extended the highway. The wilderness became suburban. My father lived to see it and hated it. My mother didn’t mind if only the suburban people stayed away from us. I remember the weekend traffic on our dirt road, and the people stopping by the cabin and asking her if she wanted to sell. She didn’t even bother to answer.

The early morning silence is broken by the roar of chainsaws. A flock of wood pigeons shoots up from the canopies below me. Dogs bark in the distance, and there’s a sound of engines and shouting. The wilderness will soon be gone. New roads crisscross the valley. I walk towards the edge of the cabin’s grounds and feel the cold rise from the grass. There’s a fallen tree where I used to sit with my father. This was as far as he could go in his final year, and eventually he just stayed on the porch, damning the city people with their shiny machines and talk of progress. He still wore his work shirts, and he would always say “we”, whenever he spoke of the company that had fired him for getting ill and probably had sold the machines to the people clearing the wilderness below us. “One day I’ll be gone,” he said, as we made our way to the fallen tree on the edge of our property. “But I’ll always be out here.” He gestured towards the valley with a shaky finger. “Hell, I’ll miss this old place. And I’ll miss you and your mother. We’ve had fun.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I answered sharply, and I had a sense of not recognizing my own voice as I spoke. “You’re not going anywhere.”

My father smiled and held my arm as we sat down. “I’ll be out here,” he said, and that was the last time he made it all the way from the cabin to the tree.

CHAPTER 4

The sound of barking and engines increases. It seems to come from somewhere down the valley side. Then, a fox races past me, almost so close that it brushes against my leg. It runs towards the cabin and disappears under the porch. It’s followed by three dogs, not hunting dogs but small, round dogs, suburban dogs, barking and whining and looking like they’d rather be back home on the couch. I lift my arms and wave to scare them off, but they show no interest. One of them lifts a curly leg and pees on the fallen tree. “Go away!” I yell, but my voice is drowned by the roar of quadbikes eating their way up the hillside. They’re driven by a group of young men, two on each bike, younger than me, with pilot glasses and tan lines on arms and legs. They look like they’ve been partying. “What the hell are you doing?” I shout. “Call off your dogs. This is private property. I will call the police.”

The men don’t even bother to turn off the engines. “We thought the place was deserted,” one of them answers. “Looks like it,” another adds. Then laughter. I feel like a child, protecting my small corner of the sandbox with arms crossed and shoulders up. “We’re just having fun,” the first man says. He whistles, crosses my ground, and heads down the dirt road with his friends and the dogs behind him. There’s a smell of gasoline and oil in the air and, faintly, of piss.

CHAPTER 5

I spend the day cleaning the cabin with an angry, fuming energy. I scrub down the floors and take pride in removing year-old stains. There’s a smell of soap and of clean, raw timber. I can’t remember the last time I worked this hard.

My mother used to scrub the floors whenever she felt upset or sad. When we moved to the cabin after my father’s death, she spent the first days scrubbing and cleaning, and at night she would sit by the small kitchen table with the light burning yellow over her head and hands that were red and swollen from the work. She never asked for my help, and I never offered it. Now it’s my turn. I feel the white, soapy water softening my skin. I scrub and attack every stain. A window slams in the wind, but I have no time to shut it. I scrub the floors while October is in the leaves and soil, in the wild apples and bare, distant fields.

I eat on the porch. It’s already dusk, and the air is chilly, but I have a feeling of burning inside. I’ve found a bottle of wine in my mother’s cupboard and have brought it with me. It tastes stale and old, but it will have to do. The owls are out; I had almost forgotten the sound of the owls.

“Are they gone?” someone asks. It sounds like an old man’s voice, deep and Southern, like a ragged, dusty rancher in an old movie.

I jump in my chair and turn around. “Who’s there?” I ask. Then, foolishly, I call out: “Brian? Someone’s here. Are you in the kitchen?”

“Who’s Brian?” the voice asks. “I’ve been down here the whole day, and I haven’t heard any Brian. Just you scrubbing the damn floor.”

“Who are you?” I ask. “And where are you?”

“Now, don’t be startled,” the voice says. “People tend to be startled when they see me. Too much tension around here. People and their goddamn quadbikes. Wasn’t always like that. Now just give me a minute.”

There’s a noise from under the porch; something’s scratching against the floorboards. Then the fox appears, covered in dust and cobwebs. “Howdy,” it says. “Not too bad down there. I must admit I dozed off. What time is it?”

I stare at the fox as it stretches. It’s old and scraggy, with patchy fur and a bite mark to the left ear.

“What?” it says. “Yes, I speak. So what? Stranger things happen. Mind if I have a sip of that nice, old red? Pray it’s not one of your mother’s Cabernet Sauvignons. Too damn sour if you ask me.”

I pour a bit of wine into a plate and put it on the floor. The fox looks disgusted. “What am I? A dog? I’d appreciate a glass not unlike yours. And no cups, please. Your mother always drank wine from a cup. A bit uncivilized.”

I find a wineglass in the cupboard in the kitchen and bring it to the porch. The fox is licking its tail. I fill the glass and put it on the floor. “Thank you,” the fox says and rises. “I’m so ready for this. What a day!” I watch it sit down beside me and gently lick the wine from the glass. After a few sips, it sighs and shakes its head. “Cabernet … Again!” It looks up with milky eyes. It’s one of the sorriest foxes I’ve ever seen. It seems half-blind, plagued by worms. “What’s the matter with you?” it says. ”Still startled? Or just not a Cabernet girl?”

“Did you know my mother?” I ask.

The fox nods. “She was a fine, old lady. We had our ups and downs, especially concerning the chickens, but she loved this land. So did you, by the way. We always thought you would hang around.”

“We?”

The fox nods towards the valley and the darkness. “You know… We, us, whatever. Would you mind refilling?”

I pour another glass for the fox and one for myself. Moths circle the light above the table. The fox examines me with its hazy eyes. Maybe it’s right; maybe stranger things happen. I can’t help laughing, and the fox laughs with me in its raspy, yelping way. We spend the night talking, of my parents, of the valley, of dogs and quadbikes, and of the ways things could be. The fox does most of the talking with its Southern drawl and heavy thirst. I try to keep up pace. At one point, late at night, the fox laughs again, letting its long burgundy tongue roll out. Then it looks me straight in the eyes and begins talking of a possible world based on respect for the land and its limits. “My father would have loved this,” I think before pouring another glass. “A drunken fox lecturing me on sustainability.”   

CHAPTER 6

It’s funny how stories shape our lives, and how our choice to share them, tell them, refine them, and consider them can alter our future in ways that we would never have imagined. Stories can show us our full potential, and they can remind us that we must never close our hearts to the wonders and mysteries of everyday life. Years have passed since I first met the fox, but whenever I tell the story I feel like simply floating in a time that’s beyond my quiet, mundane life. You can call it story time or the time that we share with our ancestors or the time of drunken foxes and swarming moths.

Whatever you wish to call it, it’s there for you as well. Your own story time, reconnecting you with who you were and who you thought you would be. Stories can help you accept and forgive, as I’ve finally forgiven my young, hard, angry self, and as I’ve forgiven the suburban people crowding the valley with their quadbikes, and lawn movers, and cheap, inflatable pools. They don’t know better, but I’m hoping they will forget their distractions and welcome the fox if he passes by.

Yes, I’m still up here, in the cabin. I’m writing this by the fireplace with my father’s faded diploma on the wall. I’ve found a diploma for my mother as well, hidden in an old shoebox under the bed: “Beetroot of the year”, it says, handwritten and signed at a local farmers market many years ago. It hangs nicely on the wall, and I’m proud to see it up. Proud that she dared, proud that she chose not to bury my father’s dreams with him.

So where do histories end, and where do they begin? Maybe this story hasn’t begun yet or maybe it begins with the crisp, still October morning when the realtor came knocking on the cabin door. The place was as clean as it had ever been, and I showed her around, telling of the endless possibilities for the right people. The realtor was enthusiastic and began talking of property prices in the valley. There was a big chunk of land coming with the cabin. Maybe we could attract a developer or one of the affluent families wanting to build. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Do you want to tear down the cabin?” “Never mind the cabin,” she answered. “You’ll be selling a large plot of land in a very attractive market.”

We talked some more and had an extra look at the view from the porch as something scratched under the floorboards. “What was that?” the realtor asked. “Mice,” I answered. “Or maybe just an old fox. They love it down there.”

She handed me her business card, took in the view a final time, and told me that she was really looking forward to hearing from me.

And maybe that’s where this story began because as I walked the realtor to her car and waved as she drove away, I had this one thought which was not really a thought but just a feeling: Maybe “the right people” is me.

I looked around, at the overgrown kitchen garden and deserted chicken coop, at the crow’s nests and the old, worn-down cabin with its flaky paint.

It would be so much easier to just sell.

And the money would be nice.

Then I would know what to do.

Wouldn’t I?   

Credits:
Written and produced by The Empty Square
Illustration: Samuel Toi
Voice artist: George Hall