I often try to explain why my wife and I live where we do. In the country, in nature, where we can raise pigs and chickens - those are the phrases I end up using. But it really comes down to living as close to wildness as we can. I realize that now. What makes it easier is that so many wild creatures don't mind living near us - so near that we hardly think of them as wild any more. The grace of wildness changes somehow when it becomes familiar, when you know it as well as we know the wild turkeys and the downy woodpeckers.

The grace of wildness changes somehow when it becomes familiar.

When I say the grace of wildness, what I mean is its autonomy, its self-possession, the fact that it has nothing to do with us. The grace is in the separation, the distance, the sense of a self-sustaining way of life. That vixen may rely on us for a duck or a chicken now and then, and to keep the woodland from closing in. How she chose to den so close to us is beyond me. The answer is probably as simple as an available hole. But our only choice is to leave her alone, to give her enough room to raise the next generation.