And just like that Foxy Brown is back. I was reading on the back porch of the Hermitage, looked up and saw Foxy moving eastward out of the Western Wild Lands into La Mancha. I grabbed my phone and managed to get a single, blurry image.
I keep thinking about Foxy Brown’s den, which I found on one of my walks and greatly admire. You’ll find it at the end of the gulley that plunges into the Deep Valley behind Engelbrecht Inn.
I walked the Camino late at night, hoping to find her eating bugs at the lights. But there was no sign of her. I was in denial for a time. I told myself you can’t plan for a fox. You run into them when you run into them. Perhaps, I told myself, I’d just had a run of bad luck.
FULL MOON IN LA MANCHA. FOXES ARE GATHERED IN THEIR SECRET LOCATION All right. Okay. Come on in everyone; make some room. Candi Sue Ellen, can you see to those kits…yeah up by those rocks. Thank you sister. Joleen you mind scooting down a bit? Thank you kindly. Okay, settle down now everyone. Here we…
Rumors and reports had been circulating around La Mancha for weeks concerning stray dogs making a nuisance of themselves at the wedding chapel. I’d been up there a few times but hadn’t caught them in the act. Then Sam called me from the Visitor’s Center. I see those dogs on the chapel’s live camera. Yep,…
There is something compelling about reaching the end of the line, going to the place where civilization ends and wilderness begins. Behind is the safe and familiar, all you know and everything you have survived. Ahead is the mystery of possibilities and the birthplace of the stories you will tell when you return from that far country.
Few people from La Mancha visit the valley and almost none have ventured deeply into it. People come to La Mancha to study with the Wizard, get married, or drink whiskey at the Fang & Feather. They aren’t prepared for a safari.
People tear up and down the Camino Dulcinea, lost in the business and busyness of weddings. They go up the hill fussing with the bride’s hair and down the hill talking to caterers on the phone. That is all most people know of the ancient Camino.
I entered the Wizard’s tower on a Sunday afternoon and ascended to the roof where I found this Phasmatodea Icarus, frozen in death.
I have wandered this property and found the humblest place on it, a speck of ground I doubt many would esteem as I do.