Somehow, we imagine foxes to be more than they really are as author Josephine Johnson confesses,
“The fox seems fast and fearless, clever and cunning, and without manners or moral or scruples, a legend of freedom, and I had long found release in this private image in my heart. When harassed by those affairs in life for which I am not well fitted—those which require grace or authority, political acumen, wit or social ease; weddings and meetings, funerals and gatherings; or when, bewildered by the constant domestic matters where the warm maternal wisdom and patience are drawn in as though they were from an unfailing spring, instead of a cistern much in need of rain—then, tormented by conflicting voices, by inadequate responses, by lack of wit or wisdom (or even the answer to Who-the-hell-are-you?) the self sought relief in the heart’s image of the wild free fox.”
-From “The Inland Island” by Josephine Johnson
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