Fox and Hound

       Today, I took my daughters and their friends sledding on Quincy Hill. The snow was fluffy and light with the sunlight pouring down, fighting a losing battle with the frigid temps to melt the snow. As I watched them load into their plastic sleds and rocket down the slope, I was reminded of when I was a boy, skidding down the hills up Sinking Creek holler.

       I know I have written about tubing off the mountain after we moved out of the valley, but today, the memories that flooded back were of when I was a little boy, down in the valley, where magick hung heavy in the air and each breath steamed with possibility.

       The 70’s were the coldest and snowiest decade of the past 100 years. I remember one year when we had snow around Thanksgiving and never saw the ground again until St Patrick’s Day. Where Mr Heckert crawled under the school bus and put on chains to get us to school in a half-foot of snow. Winter had teeth and we learned to avoid getting chewed on.

       One of the ways we dealt with snow was to play in it. Sledding was a first option, but sometimes a kid needed more to do than just trudge up the hill time after time. Thrilling as it was, sledding grew old after awhile. That is when we came up with “Fox and Hounds.”

       Imagine a game of tag played in snow, on a track made by tramping out grooves in the newly fallen snow. We would slip on our four-buckle arctics (remeber those?) and start making a design, a little train of young boys chug chug chugging after each other to fashion a web in the snow. The idea was to play a classic game of tag and stay in the confines of the pathway we had stamped out earlier.

       Often, we would start with a hub and wheel formation, but would eventually have a wider design with many rays and long winding paths that radiated off into the drifts. It seemed like hours were spent chasing each other around the labyrinths we had created, although I’m sure a few minutes passed for each seeming hour.

       What strikes me most, looking back thru the lens of time, is how we would often include a few paths outside the main wheel. Paths that would be just beyond reach, that paralleled the the paths most tred. Often we would be leaning out over those paths to desperately try to make that connection across the gap, fingers aching to touch another, to complete the game.

       It seems to me that we worried about those moments most of all, those times of near connection. And I came to realize that the fulfillment wasn’t from just catching someone to not be “it,” to not be the fox; but to play the game, to strive, to make the connection. Sometimes we have to be content to reach across the void and get close to someone else before drifting away on a precocious whim of the path we are on.

       Relationships are that way sometimes. We get close, but despite how much we strain and reach out to connect, we must eventually be content with running a parallel path. Friends are sometimes just a breath of a finger width away, to drift away and be drawn together thru the funnel of events and time.

       I miss those days of innocence and joy that shaped who I am, but even more, I miss the friends who stretched out a hand that was a whisper of a breath from mine. Friends I have lost, and friends I have found who reflect what I am. No matter how we drift apart or near, know that you are in my heart.

       God bless you all.