The Fox That Owns the Place

Ian and I have been back from Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks for less than a week now.  We spent 3 days in Grand Teton and a week in Yellowstone.  In a change from our normal routine and with her principal’s permission, my wife, Sidney, went with us for the first five days.  Then we got her on her flight out of Bozeman, MT and Ian and I continued on to Yellowstone’s northern range.   Yellowstone is a place I have fallen in love with.  Ian enjoys it immensely as does Sidney.  But the second half of this trip was our ‘man’ trip, with just Ian and me. 

Yellowstone is one of those places of constant change, where one visit will be completely different from the next.  We’ve seen 80 degree days and we’ve seen snow.  We’ve seen bright sunshine that leaves you in your shirt sleeves, or cold rain with strong winds that even with gloves and coats leaves you trying to find just a little more warmth.  That is a large part of what I think we love about the place.  No two days are ever the same.

We did some of our usual things – we took a whitewater trip on the Yellowstone River one day, and we spent a bit of time on horseback with a guide.  We were again far enough out that it was just the 3 of us and the horses.  No other people.  But there were plenty of animals.   This year was a big year for moose and for grizzlies, as well as black bear.  The wolves were not as present – we only saw one this visit.  And of course the elk, bison, bighorn, and mule deer were very visible throughout the trip.

But there was one animal that we saw that made the biggest impression on us.  In some ways this critter reminded me of my son.  It was a little fox, and he was missing about a third of his tail.  At some point, he had some bad fortune – a run in with a larger predator maybe – and had a significant segment of what should have been a big bushy tail missing. 

This fox was not in the field or on a hill.  Instead, he was walking right down the middle of the oncoming lane of traffic on the road between Mammoth and Tower Junction in Yellowstone.  He also had a small traffic jam behind him.  The first car in line was a massive white pickup truck – you know – the kind with the dual wheels in the back.  The whole mass of this parade was moving at about 3 miles an hour.  Luckily, there was no one behind us, so we stopped and watched.  As the fox passed us, he actually looked over at us.  I would swear that he had an expression on his face that was half humorous and half self-assurance.  We watched as this parade continued, fox in the lead, for about the next quarter mile, where everyone disappeared over a hill, still moving at about 3 miles an hour.  That night at dinner, we were in hysterics laughing at the sight of this fox.  Ian then went on to describe it to the waitress, who was about his age, and had her laughing, too.

Later that night, as I was lying awake in bed and thinking about the day, it really hit me how much that fox reminded me of Ian.  Despite whatever that fox had been through to cost him his tail, he seemed to be enjoying himself.  Hmm, who do I know that has that kind of mindset?  It certainly isn’t me.  I’m too dour.  But Ian seems to find humor in almost everything, and doesn’t seem to let the things he has to deal with get to him.  But that fox definitely seemed to know what it was doing and where it was trying to go, and it wasn’t going to let something like a big pickup truck deter him from his goal.  Hmm, again, sounds like Ian.  After having one of my, ‘son, are you studying enough?’ lectures all planned, because I was waiting for bad grades to arrive from the college after keeping my mouth shut all semester and just watching what I thought might have been an academic train wreck approaching, I never got to use that lecture.  Ian, I think, knew what had been coming.  When he presented semester grades of all ‘A’s to me, I did my impression of a fish out of water, and I got the same look from him that about two weeks later I got from that fox.

That expression told me that he knew exactly what he was doing.  Disabilities or not, he has a plan and is following it.  Just as that fox was not going to move for that line of traffic, Ian is chugging down his own road, keeping in his lane and doing what he needs to do to get where he wants to go.   That look was also took another one of those steps to make me reevaluate Ian.  He is an adult (I’ve known this for a while – it just is hard to accept in my role as dad).  While he still asks for guidance at times, he is able to make those adult decisions.   He needs me less than he ever has.  This is a hard realization. Not bad a bad realization, but just hard one.  I now keep that picture of the fox on my computer, so that when I start feeling the need to go into helicopter mode and hover, I can pull it up and look at that fox’s expression and think about that day.  It reminds me that the time for hovering is long past.  It also helps me remember that Ian has a plan about where he is going, and he is in control of that plan, not me.