Scientist observes nature in situ and in solitude. A shorthand summary of Fox & I suggests succinct clarity. Raven, who calls herself “pathologically private,” writes from a cabin near Yellowstone, a refuge far from people and, less successfully, from a past spattered with cruelty and pain. I will think of her and the red fox with whom she came to share space and time. Raven’s book makes me so want to see them again. Once, in a winter storm, Ghost rolled on his back in the snow, kicking all four feet in the air, and the fox quickly did the same. The fox and Ghost dart back and forth-careful to keep a respectful distance, crouching, bobbing and weaving, grinning at each other. Over the past several years, one of these sleek canids has taken to playing with Ghost, my brother-in-law’s part wolf–part husky. Most times, I see red foxes, beautiful creatures built for speed and grace. It is both a timely tale of solitude and belonging as well as a timeless story of one woman whose immersion in the natural world will change the way we view our surroundings each tree, weed, flower, stone, or fox.I go to the Northern Rockies every summer and most winters-not far from where wildlife biologist Catherine Raven wrote her jewel of a book, Fox & I.

Fox and I is a poignant and remarkable tale of friendship, growth, and coping with inevitable loss and of how that loss can be transformed into meaning. Friends, however, cannot save each other from the uncontained forces of nature. From the fox, she learned the single most important thing about loneliness: we are never alone when we are connected to the natural world.

Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends. How do you even talk to a fox? She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. She had never had a regular visitor before. Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. In the meantime, she taught remotely and led field classes in nearby Yellowstone National Park. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. An unforgettable memoir about the friendship between a solitary woman and a wild fox.

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