We begin our foray into the world of dreaming animals as I began it, in a place where creativity opens a threshold for a spiritual relationship with the living world.

.On the heels of my prior exhibition, Entangled, I was beginning to consider the shape and scope of my next project. It was early December, and snow began to fall in earnest on one of my daily hikes. The first snow always has a magic to it, and so I went straightaway from the forest to my studio to record that experience. The fox had not yet arrived on the scene.

I spent many lovely hours absorbed in the details of the pastel: the rhododendron leaves glazed lightly with snow, the delicate gray lacework of the trees’ branches, the dissolution of light by cloud and snow. But when it was done, I realized something was missing.

I definitely felt like an animal presence was needed, but rather than rush to fill the scene, I set the piece aside and asked the forest to activate something for me. Maybe something would happen. Maybe not.

A few nights later, driving home, I saw a fox! This is a rare encounter. Even stranger, the fox ran across the bridge in front of my car. I found this very intriguing, and curiously symbolic, but decided to hold off. One strange encounter definitely has my attention, but doesn’t necessarily mean a message has been delivered from the Otherworld. Still, that bridge crossing….

A few nights after that, another fox dashes across the road.

Ok, the forest has spoken. A fox it is.

The fox made his way into my snowy scene, and then the fox wanted something more, an exchange, a challenge. So I placed this impossible glowing egg on the path. As if he was presenting me with an opportunity, or a riddle.

I want to take a step back here, and tease out some subtle details in this story. Because this piece stands at the threshold of Dreaming Animals, and in truth it isn’t about a dream at all. I didn’t dream of the fox, In truth I can’t recall offhand ever dreaming of a fox.

But as a trickster, the fox has a mighty power to walk in-between worlds, and this I have experienced before. And the instant that I saw the fox running across the bridge and in front of me, I had the sense that not only had my request been heard, but a deeper request, one my waking mind is less cognizant of, was also ripe for reply. To me the fox is a connector of realms, he can travel from our waking reality to the Otherwolrd with ease. So the fox became a guide into the Otherworld of dreaming.

There is more. Some of it is deeply personal. But I cannot make my next claim about the powers of the dream world and creative practice without telling some of the story.

A few weeks later, walking on my daily trail, I encountered something unusual and inexplicable on my path. I stood there for a moment, curiosity deeply engaged, until I realized it. Goosebumps flushed on my skin. I was standing in the exact spot where, in my pastel, the fox had left the egg.

One week later, on my hike, just above the aforementioned spot, a Fox ran out in front of me on my trail, very close! I could see the red fur mingled with the dark, the great bushy tail, the ears, erect and velvety. I was thoroughly astonished. As was my dog Togo, who was thankfully restrained by a leash and no small portion of my arm strength. I immediately called a dear friend, who at the same moment was on a nearby trail and was being gifted something rare and magical and deeply personal.

Obviously I did not expect such an outpouring of numinosity when I asked the forest to show me what was missing in my artwork. But these experiences bear witness to the Mystery of the world. This Mystery is the fabric of the Otherworld (or underworld, or collective unconscious), and two of the most accessible doorways we have for the beings of the Otherworld to communicate with us are dreaming and creative work.

We are deeply embedded in the living world in ways we do not understand. Perhaps we aren’t meant to understand. To understand something suggests that we have absorbed the meaning of an idea or experience completely, and isn’t that altogether impossible, when you consider the vast complexity of the world? Might it even be an insult to the Mystery, to believe that it could be grasped, especially as we barely understand ourselves?

But to engage with the Mystery, to establish a relationship with it, to acknowledge both our smallness and our capacity to behold vastness, to be in a state of wonder, to stand at the threshold and feel yourself seen –that is some of the deepest magic of life. It comes to us in our dreams, and in our creative work. As humble servants, we can weave it into this world, spellbound, bewildered, and blessed.

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The fox had not yet arrived