MUSINGS
Reflections of a Wildlife Tracker
by Kathy Dean
Wildlife tracking feeds a deep hunger in me, a longing to increase my familiarity and understanding of the more-than-human beings I share this planet with — their behaviors, their habits, their rhythms, their needs – their interactions with the landscape and their unique niche in the ecosystem. The moment I step outside my door, I’m instinctively drawn to tracks and other signs that animals leave in their wake, and to the endless stories those impressions reveal about their lives. My senses open, my curiosity awakens, my capacity for wonderment unfurls, and my desire to connect more deeply with the natural world is piqued. I enter into a flow state, feeling awakened and alive and almost giddy with a sense of recognition and reconnection with my kin.
For me, the process of tracking is an intentional practice of paying attention to the world around me. With each new track or trail that I encounter, I have the opportunity to gain familiarity or deepen an existing layer of knowledge about that animal and their interactions with the world. At times wildlife sign or behavior I’ve encountered is unfamiliar or mysterious to me. I embrace those moments of not “knowing” as well, as opening to uncertainty keeps my mind and senses sharp and my curiosity hungry. This keeps me searching. Keeps me learning. And thankfully, the joy and satisfaction of discovery and learning never ends.
Though I have trouble articulating exactly how, tracking stirs a cavernous place deep within me that I can only describe as primal. It reminds me of my ancestors and their lifeways of hunting and gathering. It reminds that I am animal too (humans can forget this) and that I am related to all of my mammalian cousins. Mammals in turn are related to all fauna, who are in relationship with all flora – all of whom have the same needs of safety and sustenance and procreation. Tracking simply yet profoundly reminds me that all life on this planet is ultimately connected. Raccoon, desert, chickadee, cattail, wood turtle, rain, black bear, giraffe, quaking aspen, octopus, glacier, goldenrod, ocean, dragonfly, kangaroo rat, forest, human – interrelated and interdependent in told and untold ways.
Though animals and landscapes don’t speak in words that humans understand, they are communicating with each other in brilliant and fascinating languages. When I’m tracking—when I attune my mind and senses to the world around me—I expand my aperture to notice life humming all around me. When I really pay attention, my elevated senses reinforce my skills as a tracker and a naturalist (one in the same, really) thereby increasing my overall ecological literacy. I am invited to relate to (build or restore relationships with) those around me, which begins with the recognition of the relationality of all life. Being present and paying close attention tickles my sense of wonder and enhances my reverence and respect for all life. I am reminded again and again, that everyone and everything on this earth is intricately interrelated and that all life matters.
I am also utterly enchanted by the sheer beauty of tracks. Sometimes, when I stop to see—a perfect bobcat print in soft mud, the delicate curve of a barred owl feather, the worn trail of a deer—I’m overcome by wonder and awe. Tracks are extensions of the animals who made them, both aesthetically stunning and spiritually alive. Each track or claw mark or scat on the landscape is a unique expression of that individual – where they were heading and why, what they were foraging and how, why they purposefully left their scent along the trail and for whom. Who they are. The realization that tracks are alive with the animal who made them catches my breath, every time.
When I find myself captivated by animals or with the infinite illuminations on the landscape they leave behind, I enter into a sense of timelessness. I am fully present, yet aware of the past and the future. A porcupine trail artfully braided through deep snow, a hollowed-out acorn adorned with the tiny teeth chatter of a deer mouse, the perfectly-round adobe-walled nest crafted by a robin – all remind me that an animal lived a part of their life here and that they may still be out there somewhere living their lives on the other side of that trail. Laying new tracks, eating new nuts, making new babies.
Tracking is my deepest love language with the natural world. It is a central way in which I choose to connect with – to be in communication and relationship with – the human and more-than-human world. Our one and only precious world.
One of the greatest gifts of wildlife tracking for me is that it reminds me that we are all connected and that we all belong. Every living being needs a safe and sustaining abode to survive and to thrive in. Earth is that home for all of us. Tracking reminds me that we are all kin, that we all need a safe and sustaining home to survive and to thrive, that we’re all in this thing called life together. Wildlife tracking teaches me how animals live in relative balance with one another and their environment and nudges me (strongly) to do my best to do the same.
Now back to listening to the plaintive songs of wood pewees and to the plunked banjo calls of green frogs and to whispers of wind blowing through pines. To watching catbird parents devotedly collecting food for their fledglings and paper wasps making pulp for their nests, for their families. To feeling the mid-afternoon sun warm my neck as I bend over to taste the subtle sweetness of red clover blossoms. And now — to going for a long woods-wander to see what else my wildly wonderful neighbors are up to.
Same Day Each Year
The intelligence of milkweed blossoms
to attract flying pollinators
sets my mind to reeling,
thinking about the infinite ineffable
Mysteries of the universe.
How do coyote mothers know
which rendezvous sites are safe
to leave their vulnerable young pups?
How do eastern newts know
when it's time to magically morph
their red terrestrial bodies to their green aquatic bodies,
when to answer the call to return to their place of birth?
How, in this big wide world, do hummingbirds know
the way to their ancestral winter home,
when the youngest birds have never been there before?
Furthermore, please appreciate this!
How do older hummingbirds know
to return to their destination,
after traveling thousands of miles,
on the Exact. Same. Day. Each. Year.
Questions are not necessary to find answers to,
they are guideposts that remind us to be open to seeing.
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Kathy Dean
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