Fox and Hare

Same route today but this time, emerging from Taniel Wood, I stopped at a fast flowing burn to stretch and drink from cupped hands amongst the bracken and stones. I stood up from the fresh water break and felt dizzy, energy sapped, vision wavering. I stumbled on upwards along the wide, open, curving forest road. At the elbow I stopped again, shaky. I looked down to my side, (Traquair House a tiny white smudge in the distance): in the foreground floated a purple/orange haze of young larch trees and, hemmed in, old stumps poking through; remnants from the last tree harvest; and a tall thin pine trunk, left as a lookout for predatory birds. Once or twice I`ve seen buzzards launch out from this platform, like hang gliders.
As the path rose I tried to coax energy back to my body. I knew it would return so, while waiting, stumbled up a new path that rose through a fire break; might this be a new route to the upper road -  up by Kite wood and, eventually, opening out to the north ? My impulse to explore these forested hills is, in part, driven by a wish to connect these paths, make sense of them, like circuits in the brain. But no upper road. Disappointed I stood looking back at the western sky: black branches against light blues and pinks, dusk falling.

Reviving now I jogged down again through long, pale grasses and green, green mosses. Then, glancing right, 50 metres away, a Roe deer, dark russet bodied, bounding into cover, thick white rump accentuating its hop. So they`re still here ! Hidden in the quiet places.
Finding the lower forest road once more I replayed the encounter: how long ? one second, two ?
Larch needles muffled my steps as I wound down, the sun`s light now a memory.
Then, before gliding down the steep tracks above the back road, I saw a fox or a hare racing across my path. I stopped and it stopped - both sizing up the other - then it dashed upwards: a large buck hare ! Maybe the "fox" I`d seen last summer...