I spent another delightful week at The Orchard Keeper in Speedwell, Tennessee, last week. I was working on writing. Trying to come up with something for the Chautauqua contests. I entered something, but I don’t think they are anything that will win any prizes. I’ve tried the nonfiction piece there before, but it has been revised since then. I wrote a Chicken Soup for the Soul piece. I attended the 20th annual Mountain Heritage Lit Festival. And I worked really hard trying to finish revisions for my short story collection. (More on that in another blog.)
The most exciting thing abut The Orchard Keeper this time around, though, hands-down, was the family of red foxes I encountered. They seem to have moved on now, so I feel like I can talk about them more freely and not worry about someone harming them.
On Friday morning, I awoke to a text from Denton, asking if I was awake. It had been sent thirty-five minutes before I woke up, so I had missed his text. He told me he had been watching a mama fox and two kits playing and was going to alert me to their whereabouts so I could watch them, too. Having never seen a fox in the wild, I was completely bummed at having missed them and raised the blinds in the bedroom where I always sleep, in hopes of catching a glimpse of them throughout the day. Just before I left for the lit fest, I did see one out the window and gasped. It was beautiful!
I got home well after dark that night and, when my headlights hit the side of the barn, two foxes split up and ran in opposite directions! I felt so fortunate to see two that time.
Fast-forward to early on Sunday morning. I planned on sleeping in for a little while before leaving. I heard two knocks on the front door and jumped out of bed, getting dressed, thinking it must be Denton and the foxes were back!
I crept out onto the porch. Denton was nowhere in sight. He must be hiding somewhere, I decided. I watched out by the barn, out in the orchard, where I’d seen fox activity on Friday. I waited patiently. And within a few minutes, I was rewarded! Two kits pounced playfully on each other at the barn then proceeded up the hill to chase each other around the Bartlett pear tree at the end of the trailer. Almost instantly, two more joined them. Four of them! And way up on the hill, watching down on them, watching down on me watching them, the mama fox stood guard.
After several minutes, I went back inside to get my camera. When I returned, mama gave a bark and the kits all stopped mid-action and looked my way. They took off toward the barn and stayed hidden for a couple of minutes, then went back to their play, just further back in the orchard, closer to the back field. Mama fox looped around and stood silently, eyes on me, until one of the kits ambled up to her for grooming. Apparently, I was no real threat, because she took her eyes off me and began licking the kits as they came to her, one at a time, then returned to dance and prance over the metal stacked in the barn, causing quite a commotion.
In all, I probably watched them for about thirty minutes. I saw a cardinal in the Bartlett pear. I heard an owl hooting somewhere in the woods. Other birds and critters called that I couldn’t identify. But it was all just about perfect. And never a sign of Denton.
I texted and asked where he was. In his house. Had he knocked on my door? No, he had not. But I distinctly heard two knocks. Someone telling me to come outside. I maintain God knocked at my door and bade me to come to church that morning.
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