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Meredith June 1995 Hmm. For a time foxes, which seem to have chosen our family for three generations for some kind of totemic relation, came into my life on a shamanic and a real plane at the same time. They informed me that they were not my personal power animal figure,and that I was to continue the ongoing effort to achieve a balanced relationship with the power animals whose acquaintance I had made rather than seek new ones. How- ever, it was clear that they had some connection with me which con- nected my mundane-level observation of them around the edge of campus with a set of spiritual and emotional exercises, shamanic if you will. When I shared some of this with a supposed friend, he never spoke or wrote to me again, thinking I was certifiable. I guess shamanic be- lief systems can be pretty hard for some folks to hear about. At the time this was a searing, painful thing, perhaps a sacrifice of some- thing I valued too highly--the opinion of others--to be able to go on with the foxwork. Many times I would lie down, tired, to sleep and have an undeniable awareness that the foxes would be out, and always I would find the energy to get up and go where they hunted. On an equal number of nights, when conditions seemed amenable yet I did not have that mys- terious tug of "here we are, where are you?" in my heart, I went to look anyway. No foxes. I've never been able to explain this (and my naturalist's education made me sorely wish to) so I won't try now. Each time I went, a different window opened. Once my father was vis- iting and went along; I kept saying, "now I don't KNOW we will see a fox, we just might." But of course the lovely marmalade vixen was there, dancing across our path, and years fell away as my father recalled his childhood fascination with the barking of foxes on their homestead, and his mother's frightening but ultimately life-affirming experience of surviving a bite from a rabid fox. We spoke of the fox stories he told us in childhood, and where they came from. "Oh, I al- ways made them up," he said. "Daddy always did. He used to say when I had kids I would have make up my own stories, not borrow his." On other occasions, as I sat waiting in the long summer dusk for the three foxes to appear, I came to understand what a debt of devastation we are working on their home. I pledged to help them, though I said I was only one person with limited influence. Later I found myself ob- liged to stand up for preserving their habitat in an open meeting on local development. Some fur flew, and I had some wounds to go lick, and the foxes are no more. Good? Not good? I am not sure there is a way to separate them, to make judgments. I looked a fool, and the fox- es still lost out to Progress, but they did what they could to make their needs known, and I tried my best. (No, I didn't mention the "shamanism" word in a real estate meeting! Just the "biodiversity" word. It's just that people all seem to think K-marts are better than foxes these days!) In some of the quiet times I was waiting for the dogfox, who sometimes barked and once sang with me, the dancing vixen skilled at charming mice in the grass, and slender, hard-to-place third fox, I simply medi- tated. In one such meditation a serious hand and arm problem began to seem more of a referred neck problem. I felt a warm glow and a sense of hope, contradicting the doctor's recent prediction I could become disabled and would certainly need painful surgery. Later I danced as the vixen had done, with a series of gentle, playful-looking head, arm, and "paw" movements. Over a week or so, the terrible pain just melted away. Sometimes my meditations turned incredibly tearful, having to do with the nature of love, the pain of losing, the great risks we must take in order to receive any deep and enduring pleasure. Fox tears, were they good or bad? Deeply felt, that's for sure, enigmatic, ambivalent, challenging me to struggle for more acceptance than there seemed room for. The foxes were good teachers, leavening their lessons with occasional moments of mischief to cheer me on. But I will always re- member the frustration, the helplessness of the night the youngest fox stood growling at a traffic helicopter, as if she could stand it down alone, while the vixen froze, and the dogfox darted in panic from bush to bush. This is what we did to them. It seems a terrible exchange for the beauty and wonder they offered me, for I cannot sep- arate myself from our communal business of consuming the Earth. I am grateful for the time they let me see them. They taught me much both scientifically and mystically (yes, they can coexist, at least in my brain). While some of the feelings they raised in me hurt soul- deep, it's as if with metaphorical claws or teeth they opened the heart I had been keeping closed tight. Meredith, Certifiable mystic, student of the shamanic, confused former science (animal behavior and evolution) major.......