Feb. 5, 1854. P. M. To walk. Begins to snow.
At Hubbard's blueberry swamp woods, near the bathing-place, came across a fox's track, which I think was made last night or since. The tracks were about two inches long, or a little less, by one and a half wide, shaped thus where the snow was only half an inch deep on ice:
generally from nine to fifteen inches apart longitudinally and three to four inches apart transversely. It came from the west. I followed it back. At first it was difficult to trace, to investigate, it, amid some rabbit tracks, of which I did not know whether they had been made before or since. It soon led out of the woods on to the ice of the meadow to a slight prominence, then turned and followed along the side of the wood, then crossed the meadow directly to the riverside just below the mouth of Nut Meadow Brook, visited a muskrat-house there and left its mark, watered, for, dog-like, it turned aside to every muskrat-house or the like prominence near its route and left its mark there. You could easily scent it there. It turned into the meadow eastward once or twice as it went up the riverside, and, after visiting another muskrat's house, where it left its manure, large and light-colored, as if composed of fir, crossed the river and John Hosmer's meadow and potato-field and the road south of Nut Meadow Bridge. .... It was not lost then, but led straight across, through J. Hosmer's field and meadow again, and over ditch and up side-hill in the woods; and there, on the side of the hill, I could see where its tail had grazed the snow. It was then mixed with rabbit-tracks, but was easily unravelled. Passed out of the wood into J.P. Brown’s land, .... What expeditions they make in a night in search of food !
-H.D.T.
Feb. 5, 2021.
It is gray-skied at 31 degrees just after a short hour-long snow squall. Even though it is cold, temperatures are increasing and the air about me feels thick and soupy with a great amount of moisture. I travel across a small field by Thornton Lane, my snowshoes helping to ease the work, but still post-holing through the crust of the upper snow. I follow the tracks of a single skier and several walkers past the back of Arrowhead Farm's horse paddocks into the trails of the Concord Land Conservation Trust's Hosmer Land.
I take a left and descend downslope through the gorgeous grove of tall white pines, stopping to watch for some time clumps of snow accumulated from the storm drop from the high branches onto the ground. The snow-covered floor is interestingly patterned from the dropping snow clumps with craters of various sizes as if the texture of the moon.
I stop to take in a view of J. Brown’s Pond through the trees, the pond being within the approximate route of the fox that Thoreau tracked on this day in 1854. I hope to find some type of tracks nearby, likely those of a deer, which I previously found on January 30, but wait for a moment to absorb my surroundings. Then, as if becoming conscious in a dream, I see up on the ridge behind the pond in between the trees the movement of a grayish creature with a long bushy tail. The sighting is so momentary that I am incredulous, and dare not to believe what I see, but the form is almost definitely a fox! The uncanniness of the moment lifts my heart; it's as if I’m seeing an apparition from 167 years ago.
After waiting and watching further, I move westward to find possible tracks. And, there the fox is again along the upper ridge of the hill retracing its own path back to the east. It moves in and out of sight in the trees, but eventually stops for about a minute within clear view, before fully disappearing from the scene. I find its trail; many tracks are post-holed through the crust of the snow, while others are lighter and on top, displaying the oval print of the paws.
I stand quietly for some time to contemplate the moment. I’ve only seen foxes a handful of times in town for the last eight years, and here I am seeing one within the location that Thoreau traced foxes tracks on the same calendar day 167 years ago! I wonder if perhaps the cycles of the earth and a wee bit of unknown magic are at work today.
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