One fall night when I was of preschool age, Grandaddy taught me to recognize the bark of a red fox. From that night on the Honeyhill Road, surrounded by pine forests and cypress swamps, until this in downtown Raleigh, surrounded by buildings, I have seen the red fox as transcendental spirits.

It was unexpected and an epiphany to chance upon two, today, asleep together amid the high-tech enterprises of North Carolina State University's Centennial Campus.

Riding the mountain bike my son Jack gave me six years ago, I startled them awake and was past before I could see what they were. When I spun back, one sat up in the ears-pointed pose of an alert but unthreatened young fox while the other licked himself clean in a leisurely, cat-like manner. They seemed healthy and confident I was no. They were right. Had I known they were sleepling on Main Campus Drive near the park and ride lots, I would gone another way to avoid waking them.

That night on the front porch with Grandaddy was my first young understanding of a relationship which has guided my life and has in many ways survived his death. My Grandaddy George Frink was the father his son could not be.

Foxes are among the wild creatures that always bring back to me the sense of things he taught and the feeling of presence he shared. He is almost with me again -- brave, strong, enduring, relentlessly honest, inquisitive, ever thirsting after knowledge, never flinching from what he found.

That night on the front porch with Grandaddy was my first young understanding of a relationship which has guided my life and has in many ways survived his death. My Grandaddy George Frink was the father his son could not be.

Foxes are among the wild creatures that always bring back to me the sense of things he taught and the feeling of presence he shared. He is almost with me again -- brave, strong, enduring, relentlessly honest, inquisitive, ever thirsting after knowledge, never flinching from what he found.

This was my weekly visit to a wasteland, and Tony Cartledge had reminded me that today (June 4, 2006) is Pentecost.

It is not altogether astonishing that as I wandered on amind the birdsong, past the exploded cattails and over torrents of running water, there was the unmistakable, silent, timeless voice:

"You called out to me. As I promised I would, I have answered."

Clearly, and in language I could not possibly misunderstand.