It was early evening in the Chisos Campground, a day after a front had come through. The temperature had plummeted, with gusty winds all day, though the weather was sunny as ever. Most of the campers had fled leaving the campground almost deserted. After supper, Max decided to stroll through the campground. The wind had died, but the temperature was dropping into the forties.
The sky was deep blue, with stars of shocking clarity. Venus, followed by Saturn, were plunging after the sun, together making a slashing diagonal across the sky towards where the sun had set. Even the crickets were silent, apparently as frozen as the campers. Everything was quiet.
Max now walked through a stretch of the campgroud without campsites. There, ahead on the road, he noticed a shape. Shining his light, Max was surprised to see a gray fox lying on the road, tail curled around it in a perfect circle, long ears erect and pointed at Max. The fox was soaking up the heat from the road, probably after his rounds of looking for scraps on plates waiting to be cleaned.
In Zion, Max had seen foxes near the campground at night, but always in motion, streaking like arrows across the road or beyond the lights of the campground.
But this fox wasn’t going to give up his warm spot without good reason. And Max didn’t give him any reason. Max switched off his light, and gently sat down on the road, not far from the fox, which stayed put. In the dim light, Max could see the fox continuing to stare at him, but after a while, the fox relaxed, and looked in other directions.
Now, Max liked to “communicate” with animals. He knew they didn’t understand English, but did truly feel there was could be some kind of interchange. He’d made the acquaintance of a seal pup on the beach at the Galapagos. He’d talked to numerous ravens and crows, getting a variety of responses from them. In Wisconsin, he liked to call in Barred Owls, Tufted Titmice, Sandhill Cranes, and Cardinals, by imitating their calls.
But you can’t fool a fox so easily. Max remembered the time on the shore of Lake Superior when, early in the morning, he had paddled up to a fox sleeping right by the shore. The fox had stretched, yawned hugely, and awakened to see Max watching just 10 feet away. But the fox had apparently never seen a person in a kayak before, the two combined as some kind of aquatic centaur—half man, half boat. So the fox had just continued to doze. Finally, Max had spoken to the fox, and then it instantly recognized him as human, frantically trying to get away and up the steep bank. For Max it had been a sobering lesson, first to be accepted as an equal—as some kind of fellow wild mammal--only to see, in an instant, acceptance be replaced by implacable fear.
So Max had the good sense not to speak to the Chisos Fox. He was going to content himself with sharing a piece of its world. As the fox looked around, Max looked around. The peaks of the basin were jagged, black and silhouetted against the last glow of the sun. Did the fox know anything of the world beyond the basin? Max suspected he did. Did the fox have family nearby, or acquaintances, or was he a loner? Did the fox notice Jupiter and Venus, and if so, of what use were they to him? Did they provide light to hunt? Could this fox be immune to beauty?
The fox raised its muzzle slightly, sniffing the air. Max could smell someone cooking upwind. How tantalizing that must be to a wild carnivore! Perhaps the fox already had a plan—just waiting on a warm spot of pavement for the right time to help himself to the leavings from this tempting meal. Perhaps this fox already had the habits and timetable of this particular family figured out.
Sitting there together, the fox taught Max something. The road was quite warm! There were no cold rivers of air coming down this particular part of the hill. This was the perfect place to survey the night, to listen to the pulse of the basin. The fox also taught Max to keep his mouth shut. There was something to be said for sharing the night in silence.
In the dark, Max heard some footsteps approaching on the road above. In a flash, the fox was gone, fading into the brush by the roadside like a ghost. A few seconds later, a light fell on Max, who was still sitting on the road. It was the campground host, on his evening rounds.
He said: “Good evening. I almost didn’t see you there.”
Max didn’t know what to say—how do you explain that you have been sharing the evening with a fox?
“Good evening,” Max replied. “I was just sitting here... the road is still warm.”
“You might want to pick another spot, or you could end up like one of those flat-rabbits.”
* * *
The next evening, when Max got back from his hike, it was dark. It was much warmer than the previous night, but not exactly balmy either. Max was going to sit outside and have a beer and look at the night sky. But there was a street light nearby that spoiled the celestial scenery, so Max decided to take a walk with his beer instead. Perhaps he’d see the fox again, and they could share a brew.
Max kept to the campground road, in an area where there were no lights. It was very dark—great for looking at the sky--but a hazard for drinking beer. On his first sip, he spilled on his shirt, because in the dark he couldn’t see what he was doing.
On the faraway slopes, shafts of light played--the headlights of drivers going to the lodge for supper. But after a while, full dark returned—just of rim of jagged buttes on all sides, black against the stellar extravaganza.
In the west where a rosy glow lingered, Venus and Saturn were putting on their nightly show. Venus was standing in for the past-full moon, which—like an aging diva-- was late to arrive.
Standing quietly on the road, Max listened to the crickets, which had resumed singing with warmer weather. They sang in slow tempo, in deference to the cool night, and a number of them were singing in coordinated tempo. But now Max noticed something extraordinary, for the first time in his career of cricket listening—the crickets were singing in… harmony. Some were a bit higher in pitch, some lower. Together, they reminded him of slow and sad barbershop quartet.
Now Max gazed at Venus, which was about to set behind a conical peak. He waited, and after a few minutes, her light started to dim. It took maybe 15 seconds for her light to extinguish altogether. Max moved on up the road, and to his astonishment, noticed that Venus was there again. By walking higher, he had caused the peak that eclipsed Venus to drop lower, relatively speaking, and Venus had reappeared! “Outstanding!”, Max thought So he waited, and within a minute, Venus started to set again. This time she took twice as long to fade—Max figured she was setting through a tree that stood on the far mountaintop. Max walked up a bit, and watched Venus set yet again. What a feeling of power—like a god, Max could will the heavens to do his bidding. Beer and star watching definitely go together, he thought.
When Max got back to the trailer, Izzy was already in bed, reading. Max was tired from his hike, so he crawled in too.
He hadn’t been in long before Izzy’s nose twitched, just like the fox. Evidently, she smelled the beer Max had spilled on his shirt.
“I notice you’ve been out drinking with the bears and foxes again….”
Not wanting to encourage comments about the company he kept, Max didn’t say anything.
“Well—you stay away from the rodents. They have fleas that carry the plague.”
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