The Hare

In the mist and dark of a country road, a Hare makes a choice...

Late last night, my husband and I were on our way home from visiting a friend, our car winding it’s way through the sleeping hills, their divets and dips filled with October mist and gummy ember leaves.
Suddenly, the largest Hare I have ever seen ran in front of the car, a flash of fawn-coloured fur and eyes as wide as saucers. My husband slammed his foot on the brake, and both car and Hare came to a stop…

We had mercifully missed hitting her, however the lights had dazzled her, so much so that she began to run in circles in the middle of the road, not knowing whether to turn back or race towards the opposite verge and hope for the best. I looked to my left, where the distant flickering lights of the dual carriageway were, and knew then that she had only just made it over that roaring stretch of tarmac. Perhaps she had thought herself finally safe, only to come head to head with our blinding, growling beast.

My husband clicked the headlights off
”Let’s give her a minute to collect herself…” he said, turning on the hazard lights so we weren’t completely invisible to other motorists.
I could only just make out the shape of her in the mist that was falling in patisserie layers around us all. She had stopped spinning and was instead stretching up on her back legs, looking for something that I wasn’t privy to. A sign perhaps, a guide of what to do next?
The Hare’s head swiveled back and my heart sank for a moment at the thought of her heading back to the dual carriageway. After a moment she turned again, and leaped into the verge, a gigantic agile spring that took her from the center of the road into the farmer’s field where the land stretched for miles with no disturbance.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and my husband and I shared a shaky laugh as we continued our journey into the night. I felt elated, thrilled even, that she had made the right choice… then that elation ebbed and gave way to envy.

The past year, I’ve been caught in the headlights myself. The reaction between flight and fight, the paralysing ‘fawn’ that has kept me from moving forward or back over the past year has been a hard test of my character and my faith, and for a while even nature was silent. I felt shrouded in a dense fog where sight and sound were cut off from me, my usual forms of divination failed me and insight felt as far away as the moon.
In periods such as this, the instinct to turn back is strong. To head back down a seemingly familiar path is an animalistic one, even if said path runs the risk of causing more harm. Retreating to what is familiar, even though that path may no longer exist and instead be full of new perils, is not something I have felt willing to do, but nor have I had the strength to leap into the unknown, the unfamiliar, the strangeness of a world I am not sure can keep me safe.
Nor can I linger spinning in the road as cars whip past and dazzle me with their lights. To live in the middle of this road of past and present and to feel trapped by the anxiety of both would also be torture. Instead, I must find a temporary home in the liminal spaces that seem to exist among these places, the lingering fog, the streams of mist that are more forgiving and allow time for contemplation, time to find lost footings and revisit the things that worked in the past and to plan for the future, without the feeling of haste.

I felt jealous of the Hare, because somebody had had the kindness to allow her a moment to gather herself, to sit in the fog and get her bearings that then allowed her the strength to leap forward. After much contemplation, I have come to the conclusion that only I can offer myself that pause, that reflection and that centering moment, the road is empty save for me and the racing cars that I have put there to block my path.
It is in this moment of clarity that I realise that insight has returned to me, and for whatever reason nature has sent me this teaching moment, a moment with my beloved guide The Hare, who has never steered me wrong before and one day soon I know I will follow her in that leap into the hedge and beyond.

-

Thank you so much for joining me here, in this new space. If you have followed over from Patreon I cannot thank you enough for your continued support. For new followers, I’m so delighted to meet you.
Please consider subscribing to this substack, I’m going to be populating it over the coming months with familiar nature-based blogs, and grimoire content, but also with new writerly-based content that I would like to explore.

Blessings,
Laura - The Bower Hare