It was the edge of a scrubby wood in Suffolk, sometime when I was at university – 1972 or 1973. I was having a picnic with friends, and we were playing frisbee, a red one, and I was running across the lumpy grassy terrain to where it had dropped. As I reached the frisbee, the heel of my right boot hit the ground as I stooped down to scoop it up – and I stopped abruptly, the toe of my boot still raised. My foot was resting – lightly, but restrainingly – on the side of a hare resting in the grass. And it was looking at me, and I was looking at it; our eyes locked, and I gently raised my foot. The hare bounded off into the scrub.
I still see it, under my boot. I still see its eye, looking at me. I still see it bounding off. I still remember the sense of a special moment, the gladness that I had landed on my heel softly, that I had reacted quickly, that we had seen each other.
The poet Ted Hughes recalled from his childhood in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, climbing up an earth bank, and when cresting the top, coming face to face with a fox, inches away. Their eyes locked. Though this was not his first encounter with a fox, it was perhaps the point when their closeness was established, through a physical demonstration of a metaphysical association. The fox became for Hughes an animal of particular significance in his spiritual, magical life.
For years, I saw few hares before and after I moved to Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, but whenever I caught sight of one it took on the nature of a fleeting vision. If I saw one, it was usually on Midgley Moor, on which I spent much time exploring and searching out, often successfully, unknown as well as known archæological sites.
Over time, I began to fancy a connection – if I followed a hare as it ran, I was more likely to find something interesting., or one of the main shapes in which it appeared. Seeing a hare came to signify a message, an affirmation from the other – from some other – world, that I was on the right track – .
