Foxes in the Mist
Text and photos/photo-sketches copyright Juli E. Wilcox, all rights reserved

ENTRY: Bering Sea, 7:30 PM, July 4
ST.PAUL ISLAND, ALASKA Pribilof Chain

Northern Lupine detail; 500 mm f/4.5, 1/60 sec., Fuji Velvia, digitally altered.

Alone with only a sketch pad, I sit on the side of a hill tucked snugly into foot high grass and lava rock. Fat stalks of northern lupine like nothing I have ever seen rise thick off this hill. Luxuriant, sensual, velvet lavender blooms.

In the distance, Aleut children play in the mist in shirtsleeves. I’m wrapped in Polartec, mittens and windpants and wonder how they do it.

I am looking downhill at a distant red road and a cream-colored roof the size of a football field, a village warehouse. An Arctic Fox appears. Steadily, it walks parallel to the building. It knows its way around. I am looking down on its back and head. Incredibly, the fox’s coat matches the dark lava roadbed and its tail matches the light-colored roof, perfect high-level camouflage. I smile at this little absurdity in nature and wonder how foxes got here and when this animal will shed the rest of its white winter coat.

To the east is the tiny harbor and along the shore, a haphazard disarray of fishing debris: nets, rope, traps, lumber and plastic. This morning, right before dawn, I was sitting down there breathing the rose-colored sunrise and watching yet another fox drink the pink water. Before I could compose a shot, it lowered its head and slipped away.

To the south is a long sloping hill with three rows of blue, yellow, green and gray houses, 11 in each row. Topping all are rose roofs, something like the flanks of Gray-crowned Rosy Finches. Four male Rosies sit below me on the hillside. They are perched individually on moss-covered rocks the color of candlelit emerald velvet. Black ears sticking out above the grass belong to a cat. Amongst skulking foxes, this animal seems out of place.

And on the southwest is the Bering Sea.

I can only hear the sea; the sound transfixes me. I sit in a foggy stupor with heavy arms, quite unable to move. I imagine I am intoxicated, but I know it's just very pleasant exhaustion and exhilaration. I want to sleep right here in this rich grass cooled by the mist. I have been moving over rough terrain with a tripod and long lens for 14 hours. Uninitiated, I had never seen a long lens like the 500 mm before arriving here. The first time I was able to find a bird and focus, I jumped in shock. How I got a shot, I cannot remember. For a land-locked Midwestern woman, there is only one unpredictable event after another. As if to prove it, from nowhere a chocolate fox pup appears.

He is 10 feet away. He doesn’t know I’m here. He stops. Watches. Sniffs. Chocolate on super saturated green. Now that’s a delectable combination. He retreats. Now he’s back. I have blocked his path. He is looking at me and doesn’t know exactly what he sees. He moves closer. I stifle a smile and try hard not to breathe. Five feet. Four feet. He’s so close, but in a flash, retreats. He’s disappeared, but I sense he’s still very close. Silence. A finch is back. Then from the corner of my eye, on the right, above, the fox peers over grass, cautiously sniffing. I see now I have seated myself on his narrow trail to the top of the hill. Blocked from below, he has circled around me. He is looking down on my back and head.

Again he sniffs a little. (On my second day here, I lost a towel I had wrapped around my camera and lens. Hiking back, I found a fox fleeing in ghostly retreat over the tundra, towel firmly in its muzzle. But by the time I finally caught up, the towel had been dropped and marked with musk so pungent I had to retrieve it on the tip of a fully extended tripod leg. I’m the one who should be sniffing.)

Now the pup circles below again and then inches up the path. 8:10 PM. He comes within one foot of me and sniffs the boot hanging in space on my crossed leg. Caribou dung, no doubt. I have rolled in it today photographing Snow Buntings. And now he’s looking right at me. Fox eyes. Amber-ochre-chocolate. Fox fur. Brown-sienna-what? Matches the wet lava dust, that’s for sure. Dark, dull-red chocolate brown.

Arctic Fox pup in the mist, St. Paul Island, Pribilofs, Alaska.

I watch his shoulder, avoiding eye contact. We are totally motionless and totally silent. Finally, when I breathe, I think the pup realizes he is not in the presence of another four-legged mammal, for in one motion with a step back and a lift of his head over his right shoulder, he is gone.

I look after him through the path in the grass and see the sea. In the interlude, the mist has lifted. I see a long swell of awesome gray matter heaving on the horizon. It is alive and glowing and there is no division between water and air. The sea light above is like mountain light before a storm. It’s silver. No, platinum. Can’t quite find the words.

Who ever said writing was easy? It is the 4th of July. I’m at the Bering Sea.

Juli Wilcox, a speech-language pathologist and director of special education, is also a free-lance writer, editor and nature photographer. Your comments on this narrative are welcome at jwilcox@willinet.net.

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