Fox

Just over a year ago I blogged about my meetings with Czech foxes I wrote then of how they are meant to be lucky. My meetings with our local fox have continued, often I will see it making its way across the fields as I walk up from the bus or down from the woods. And I have come to associate it with creativity, one of my favourite poems is Ted Hughes' Thought Fox, which is for my money the best poem about the writing process I know.

As some readers of this blog will be aware one important reason why I bought my Czech home is that I needed somewhere to write. It is so to speak my den, my dark hole, built into the hillside, a hill called Fox's Lair. Over the last year I have indeed started to write again, and not just this blog, and superstitiously I have partly put it down to my fox companion. Even when I do not see him, I hear him in the woods above the house, tormenting the village dogs. "Ha!" he seems to be saying, "You have sold your freedom for a bowl of meat. I have the woods, all the roots and dark places as my kingdom." And at this the village dogs go mad with vain barking.

I have put his face on my door in the form of a brass knocker, he hangs on the wall as one of a set of horse brasses, I have drawn him in oil pastels. And the more I find out about him and his place in folklore and superstition, the more I think I have found the right familiar. A month or so ago I was telling my husband about this, and how strangely although I had been writing almost continuously, my fox had kept out of sight. My husband stopped me at this point "Look, look," he said. There in broad daylight no more than a metre away from the window my fox was strolling across the grass in the direction of the neighbours' chickens.

Diamonds in the Snow

Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend Salamander. We took the path up to the woods above my house, the weather was perfect – sun, snow, a clear blue sky, a deep blue I have never seen in England. We are having extremely low temperatures at present -20 degrees last night. It is as they say too cold to snow, the water vapour stays in the air and forms snow-like crystals over everything. On Saturday morning you could even see the ice hanging in the air where the sunlight shafted down, minute crystals would flash in shimmering clouds, a glimpse of the spirits of the Czech winter working their magic. Now we reaped the benefit of their work, we walked through ankle-deep virgin snow, broken only by occasional animal tracks. On the snow's surface flowers of ice crystal bloomed and shone in the sunlight. The branches of the dark firs at the forest edge were picked out by white.


We walked through woods, now bereft of the birdsong which had accompanied my mushrooming forays in the summer and autumn, the only sound being the crunch of the snow and occasional branch crack. Ducking under an electric fence we followed the edge of the forest down a steep slope – in the distance the Klet was bathed in sun, but with a scarf of low cloud around its shoulders. Crossing a frozen stream we regained the path and returned to the house and warm mugs of tea.

As dusk fell Salamander departed and I settled down with a book whilst the woodstove chugged in the corner. Then the phone rang – it was Salamander. “If you can, take a look at the moon.” I walked into the yard at the end of the orchard the moon full hung just above the old apple trees – large and orange. The light was so bright, the orchard was lit up as if in daylight. This morning I left the house at 8am to walk to Horice na Sumave to catch the bus into town. The sun was rising and the sky was coloured. As I walked I watched the sun turn the white snow yellow and the ice on the trees a peach colour. My house stood glowing in the light on the other side of the village. And just to finish off the enchantment across the fields as bold as brass ran my fox. I had not seen him since my return from England at New Year. He looked across the field at me, sniffed the morning air and darted into the cover of the woods. The dawn sun had turned his coat a dark auburn. By the time I got to Horice the world was white again.

St Hubert's Hunt

Readers of the Krumlov Expats blog will have already read a post about the hunt posted by Salamander. Unlike Salamander who was one of the “huntsmen”. I attended only as a spectator, which I hope justifies my writing a post on the subject on the grounds that my take will be somewhat different.

The “hunt” took place in the wonderful parkland surrounding the Cerveny Dvur Asylum. Cerveny Dvur was formerly a chateau and is now a hospital treating alcoholism and drug addiction, nevertheless the extensive parkland in which it sits is open to the public and moreover offers information boards (in English as well as Czech) on the creation of chateau, landscape and park features. This alone would justify a visit to Cerveny Dvur, with the result that in addition to the “hunt” spectators there were also people who had come simply to enjoy a walk in the grounds and who could blame them.

Well that is the setting – now for the topic of the blog. You may have noticed that I keep talking about the hunt in quotation marks. With all due respect to Salamander and the other members of the hunt, I really didn't get the impression it was a hunt at all, not that that is a bad thing particularly. Like Philip Wilkinson who commented on the Expats blog I am familiar with the Cotswold Hunt, which may not now hunt foxes nevertheless still does charge across farmland (presumably as a drag hunt) jumping any barrier between them and their “prey”. I have seen them jumping large gates and Cotswold stone walls and I have seen the damage this sometimes causes. The Cotswold hunt horses are massive – real hunters – and they need to be. Not so the St Hubert's hunt – where none of the horses were particularly large and some were mere ponies. This was possible because this “hunt” was perhaps more similar to a gymkhana or horse show, with relatively low fences constructed specially for the occasion. There were various equestrian games, including the main event chasing someone in a plastic fox mask. It had therefore an altogether different atmosphere. There was a delightful amateurishness about it all – the man commenting on the tannoy and trying to fill in the gaps, the small brass band, the grins on the riders faces, it was along way from the thrill and seriousness of the British hunt. I was reminded of village fetes, my companion commented that all they needed was a stall selling jam and cakes. All of which seemed rather strange given the Czechs' love of hunting, shooting and fishing, on which I have commented in the past; but then I suppose real Czech hunting is probably more of a solitary affair.

The crowd was, one suspects, mostly made up of friends and family of those involved and cheered the winners, clapped the losers and took lots of photos and videos. A stall provided goulash, coffee, the ubiquitous sausage and bread, as well as sweets for the young members of the audience. Unusually for the Czechs (and it would have been unusual too for a British hunt) there was no beer or alcohol of any sort on sale – a consequence of being in the asylum's parkland – and yet people did not object and got on with the business of enjoying themselves. The audience was very egalitarian, unlike the “county” set that one associates with British hunts and the event even included a session of singing round a campfire

But then I rather suspect I am bringing my own prejudices to this. When I was young my parents scrimped and saved for me to go to a local private junior school. There I found myself among girls who seemed to live and breathe ponies and riding. There was never any question that my family could afford (or for that matter would prioritise) riding lessons or the costs of having a pony. I found myself on the outside of that set, it was my first experience of British class system. I in turn made it very clear that I did not want a pony and rejected all things horsey, I had other more important things to do, like writing poetry. Nor for that matter did I want to go on the skiing trip, another activity the Czechs enjoy, I don't think I even bothered to take the letter about the trip home to my parents. So when I was asked at the Czech hunt if I fancied learning to ride, I automatically said no. Even now I cannot bring myself to do it.

Meetings with Foxes

On Saturday I took a taxi home, as driving having drunk alcohol of any quantity is forbidden in the Czech Republic. On the road we came across a fox – the taxi slowed to a crawl and the fox disappeared from the headlights' fierce glare into the verge. “Liska,” said the taxi driver smiling. Strangely this was my first encounter with a wild fox (liska) in the Czech Republic, although I see them regularly in England on the hills around my home. The only previous meeting had been with a sad fox at a nearby zoo, which paced up and down in its concrete cell.

My Czech home is built into the slope of a small hill, the downstairs rooms at the back being literally scraped out of the rock and earth. The hill is called Lisci Dira - Fox Hole in Czech. The following day I set off for the woods to walk and collect mushrooms. After the intense heat of the day before, the sky was cloudy and threatened rain. We had not had rain for several weeks and even then it had not been enough - the wood's floor was tinder-dry. I was just about to turn for home, when I spotted a clump of chanterelle mushrooms. I had looked in all my usual spots for chanterelles without success and had come to the conclusion that the drought had put paid to them. But there they were hiding in the moss. The Czech name for the chanterelle is Liska Obecna – common fox.

I had just picked the last of them, when a drop of rain fell on my arm. By the time I was out of the woods, across the field and into the narrow track that runs down to the village, I was soaked. As I came to the end of the trees that lined the track, I was stopped short by an extraordinary sight. There in broad daylight – it was 3pm and so mid afternoon – was a fox standing in the middle of the lane. It contemplated the scene for a while and then trotted off into the fields. Now I have seen foxes in daylight in London, indeed we had a whole family of them living in our back garden, but they were urban foxes used to people and had no cause to fear us, so unlike their country cousins. I walked on musing on this strange meeting. It is apparent to me that the fox allowed me to get that close. In my haste to get home and out of the rain I had made no attempt to walk softly and a fox's big red ears can hear a mouse squeak at 100 metres, I had stood watching him for a good minute or two before he chose to move off. Now he had chosen to stand in my path.

I am told that to the Czechs this was a lucky occurrence, that the fox is an animal spirit associated with witches and his appearance to me (not once but twice) was a sign of good fortune. I certainly felt lucky to have met with "bold Renardine".