The Fox and The Hollow
A Colorado Photo Shoot Turns Wild
We slipped away for a weekend and Colorado, my Jen and me. She booked a cabin in the woods for us that required an all-terrain 4WD rental and a devout trust that sliding off the side of a 45-degree black ice slope is not the way one is destined to die. I’m pretty sure I die of drowning because it happens once a week in my dreams. My car drives off the side of a bridge. Tragically and fortunately, this fact deems me able to fully lean into the calculated risk of our ascent.
We stack logs and collect unevenly ripped strips of cardboard for kindling A fire roars our toes warm. Jen layers cheese into the bottom of porcelain bowls and spoons chili on top. And we sit and pull cards and think and speak and listen with our whole bodies. Deeply and rebelliously and honestly. And I feel my soul gather the strength it needs to carry on. Jen has this effect on people.
On Saturday she hands me her furry white vest and tells me to get dressed. We are doing a shoot. I flinch because my skin is so bad. My face is swollen from lack of sleep. My eyes are red. I’ve put on weight and all my clothes are an uncomfortable gradation of snug. This is not the time to celebrate my existence, I feel. I am such a wreck.
But alas, I relent. Because Jen is Jen and her magic is magic and she taught me how to be brave.
She’s already clocked the location: a dilapidated livery at the bottom of the road we turn down to get to our cabin. Overgrown and falling apart with a second story I’m afraid to think about.
She assures me the shots will be taken from far away so I don’t need to sweat my physicality in any kind of way. I exhale a cramped sign from a wound-up chest. And try to suck my cheeks in, to an imperceptible degree thinking it might help my cause.
We walk through the house and the light is beautiful. Nails and burned-out couches. Nonsensical messages on the walls we try to decipher. On the backside of the building, she tells me to pause in a wood-strewn doorway. To hold there. I look down at my feet because that’s how I’m feeling.
All of a sudden, speaking of nonsensical, Jen from 12 feet away in a direct hushed instruction issues, “Rosie, don’t move. Do not move. Do not move a muscle. Stop. Right there.” I wonder if I look particularly good in this light or if there’s a murder hornet nesting in my tangle of hair. I’m still not scared because I know how I die. So I follow her orders. She lowers her camera and I see she’s gazing up at the second floor. She’s still too shocked to speak. So I start to wonder if maybe she’s seen a ghost.
What feels like a 30-second eternity comes to an end.
“Rosie. There’s a fucking fox.”
“There’s a fucking fox in the window.”
“It’s gone. But there was a fucking fox.”
“I saw its head peek out and froze. And I missed it. I fucking missed it. I was in shock.”
Her eyes well up with tears. Mine follow not far, never far behind. Without words, we both recognize the magic follows us around. Our tears are ones of deep gratitude. For the inexplicable.
We trudge stunned, through the crunchy tall wheat and puddles of melted snow underfoot. Back at the car she turns her massive camera around to face her and does a quick scan of her shots.
A gasp.
“Rosie. I fucking got it. I got the fucking fox.”
We hold hands in the center console. We are ok with no words for now.
