I was there but I was not harmed, Mr Fox’s Story continues. Sunday a week before last I watched a hare drink beside a common pond*. It was late afternoon and I was in Cumbria over a long weekend with a group of men. We were twelve in all stood in a field, until the hare arrived that is, then we were thirteen which of course disturbed the perfect symmetry of our community you could say.
I came across her – ‘Her’ or was it ‘Him’? I couldn’t say for sure, but I felt her that way, hares being some of my special friends as I like to claim. Well, that is the way I see it, although I have to admit that the community of hares don’t always see it the same way about me. So when she saw me, she slinked off into the shadows of a stone wall.
And I followed as that was expected of me, stalking along the edge of the wall to trying to get up close, until she saw me and moved off again. As that was equally expected of her. And so the hunter and hunted continued, tracking along the square stone walls at the edge of the field, she allowing me close but no closer.
Until listening – there is the quiver of the hare drinking – “a sound sensitive fresh as soft rain upon a leaf” (Llewellyn Powys). I am also told that in a recent issue of the New Scientist it is reported that scientists have agreed that if we were able to stand outside our universe for a moment we would not only be able to see the whole of space and all the galaxies and everything else it contains, but also the whole of time, past and future, laid out in it in its totality in that instance.
Until the hare had turned another corner of the field and I had followed keeping tight to the stone wall so as not to lose her. Then turning the corner myself about ten paces in front of me sat her partner. He was the largest hare I had ever seen. He sat with his powerful back to me, ears erect and whiskers sensing the air, and I could see fine droplets of misty rain sparkling on his perfect brown fur like stars. Drinking.
Go Back, I thought but it was too late.
Drinking by a common pond, and listening to what is happening in the world since it goes on hotting up among us men. That’s the way it feels in ‘mitteleuropa‘ as we say; the pressure cooker is hissing furiously, and lifting her lid a little now and then to leak a little steam. For instance, I read that last Tuesday Cyclone Cleopatra struck the island of Sardinia, more than 440mm of rain falling in 90 minutes. 18 people were reported dead, many more injured and the President of Italy expressed” solidarity with the communities involved”.
And I am not done with…
And I am not done with my story.
*the common pond:
“I owe it as a human being… to stand here by the pond as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”
(Jacob Bronowski)