A Fox So Far

As they say in Austria, let's start at the very beginning....

    I was born and raised on the planet Earth starting out in Melbourne, Australia.  Over the years as I grew I was blessed to live in and visit a multitude of countries and cities which, I believe, plays a huge part in how I currently see the world.  My memories can go back as far as several brief moments whilst I lived in Virginia (USA) - there was a fish tank with freshwater Angelfish in it and I remember picking up an Earthworm at The Little Acorn Patch day care.  My stronger memories came over the next few years in Mazatlan, Mexico where my mother watched in horror as I tried to meet my wild iguana 'friends' by putting my little 4 year old arm down one of their burrow entrances in the ground.  I had my arm in up to my shoulder before she got to me and pulled me away...some of those iguanas were really big and probably would have let me know that my arm was not a welcome visitor in their home.  I spoke fluent Mexican Spanish thanks to the Anglo-Moderno school where I went for both Kindergarten and first grade.  It was also in Mazatlan, Mexico that I learned about life and death through the horrific death of our Alaskan Malamute, Ranger.  Some horrible people threw poisoned meat over the wall on purpose and dear Ranger found it.  My father and mother both told me to look at the stars and know that Ranger was up there in spirit looking down.  Sometime after, I became an older sister and before we left the country I was finally allowed to jump off the roof into the swimming pool all by myself after years of watching my dad and his friends...I was five years old and I'm still proud of myself. The Gambia was our next home and it was there that I began to understand that there were so many different types of people in this world.  One of the memories that sticks out for me whilst there was a street festival from the Jola people of West Africa where a person dressed as a Kumpo dances about whilst people sing and drum.  The Kumpo is a creature of legend and the suit is made from tons of thin palm leaves covering the entire body with a very long, narwhal-like horn made from wood that comes out of the top of it's head.  I remember opening the gate door from our home and coming face to face with this creature - I was both afraid but also very drawn to the imagery before me.  We frequently hiked through Abuko, a nature reserve and park, that opened my eyes up to a whole new world of plants and animals.  It was in Gambia that I also won a watermelon eating contest and was a part of a Scottish Highland Dancing group.  I loved holding the Red Velvet Mites (a type of arachnid) that would come out of the ground after heavy rains, chasing and picking up geckos, and I was pretty obsessed with Unicorns at the time.

Next we moved to Kuwait, a country smaller than the amount of property that Disney owns.  Probably the most influential of all the countries I visited and lived in whilst growing up.  It was there that I learned how to play the saxophone and sing, I learned about the true meaning of friendship, I learned about love and heart break, and, after I left, I learned that the mass opinion of the world about a people, a place, or a belief system can be terribly misinformed.  

In the years leading into becoming a teenager I was lucky enough to experience living in Taiwan for a year.  I went to the Taipei American School and for the first time and last time I finally got to ride in a classic yellow school bus.  I played on the hilly slopes of the Yangmingshan district and first encountered a Hummingbird Moth.  I visited the Thousand Steps Temple (walked those steps too) and came home with a small box with two golden brass crickets in it that, when opened, sang like real crickets.  I don't know where that box went. 

I moved back to Kuwait after that and then spent vacations going to Guangzhou, China where I utilized what Mandarin I learned to explore the alleyways and little shops along the river district near our home.  I was fearless wandering those streets on my own peering into buckets filled with snakes and other crawling edibles.  I loved meeting street vendors and haggling over price on small Kilin and Fu Dog statues.  We were lucky to get to explore the countryside including Guilin and see the famous limestone hills rising up through the fog from the river.  The food was amazing and the people extraordinary.  

I had my first real teenage hissy-fit when my parents announced our moving to Sydney, Australia.  I'm not upset about it any more and am extremely grateful for my time there but I definitely caused a hullabaloo about it.  I had to go to an all girls school and although it came with some pretty lofty bells and whistles that I can now say are attached to my life's resume I struggled with it almost every day. I felt estranged among the girls who had known each other all their lives.  I felt lost without my musical outlets that I had so easily found while in Kuwait.  I was constantly arguing over what art actually was with my art teacher. And for the first time in my life I really, truly felt ugly.  Twenty years later, I'm working on fixing those programs within my psyche.  What I won't fix is the plethora of other memories made: camping in the Blue Mountains, the Orca museum in Eden, the friends I did make, Byron Bay, amazing seafood, kayaking and sailing in Sydney Harbor, the Sydney Opera House, and 4WD trips on sand dunes that went on for miles.  I'm keeping the scar I got from a Kangaroo too.

After graduating high school in Australia, my family moved to Cameroon - a country I am so lucky to have called my other home while in college.  Higher education was spent in Massachusetts at Becker College.  I obtained a pretty amazing education in veterinary sciences which definitely expanded my experiences with animals of all kinds.  While in college I also got to spend some of my summer working with Johns Hopkins as a researcher in the rainforests of Cameroon.  I got to work with Bats and Rodents in a disease emergence study they were conducting in that part of the world.

After college, I moved down to North Carolina here in the US.  I was in the Greensboro area for several years working at both a pet resort and then as the emergency veterinary technician on overnights at a hospital that offered medical services to small and large animals.  Somewhere in there I got engaged.  Then I got un-engaged.  Then my car caught fire and blew up and I found Wilmington - a growing town on the coast of NC.  I've been here since the end of 2008.  Lots has happened since then too.  I continued on as a veterinary technician until I couldn't take the ethics (or lack there of) in the clinic.  I left it during the recession so I began my art business that took me to many conventions while simultaneously moonlighting as a cab driver, pottery painting instructor, acrylic painting instructor, and then working at a metaphysical store.  

That last one was the game-changer.  It was at that store that I found my own intuitive gift - an innate filter that allows me to read people's signatures as very species specific animals.  

Now, nine years later, I'm ready to start blogging some of these experiences while I work on my first book.  

-Fox