MUSINGS
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.
​
Kathy Dean
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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 animals I share this planet with—their behaviors, their habits, their rhythms, their needs – their interactions with the landscape they inhabit and their place in the ecosystem. Whenever I’m in nature, I’m drawn instinctively to look for tracks and other signs that animals leave on the landscape, and to the endless stories they tell. My curiosity awakens, my senses open, my sense of wonderment unfurls, and my desire to connect with who or what I’m seeing is piqued. I am shown how animals live in relative balance with one another and their environment and I am reminded to do my best to do the same.
For me the process of tracking is an intentional practice of paying attention to the world around me. With each new track or trail I encounter, I gain more insight or deepen an existing layer of knowledge about that species and their interactions with the world. Sometimes animal sign or behavior I’ve encountered is unfamiliar. I’ve come to embrace those moments of not knowing as well, as opening to uncertainty keeps my mind and senses sharp and my curiosity enlivened. This keeps me searching. Keeps me learning. And thankfully, the joy and satisfaction of learning never ends.
Tracking wildlife also stirs a cavernous place deep within that I can only describe as primal. It reminds me that I am animal, that I am related to all of my mammalian cousins, who are related to all fauna around the globe, who are in relationship with all flora around the globe. Tracking simply yet profoundly reminds me that all is connected. Raccoon, desert, cattail, mountain, wood frog, rain, chickadee, giraffe, bear, quaking aspen, glacier, octopus, flying squirrel, luna moth, ocean, woodrat, human—all connected in told and untold ways.
Though animals and landscapes don’t speak in words that humans understand, they are communicating in their own brilliant and fascinating languages. When I am tracking—when I tune in to what I am seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling or tasting—I expand my aperture to life humming all around me. I am invited to build or grow relationships with those around me. My interpretative skillset and ecology literacy as a wildlife tracker and naturalist are heightened. And I am reminded again and again, that everyone and everything is intricately interrelated and interdependent.
That every life and every thing matters.
Tracking is my deepest love language with the natural world. It a central way in which I chose to connect with--to be in communication and relationship with--the human and more-than-human world. Our one and only precious world.
I also feel delight and enchantment 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, what they were eating, why they purposefully left their scent along the trail. 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 the signs they leave behind (which is nearly every time I’m paying attention to the world around me), I enter into a sense of timelessness. I am fully present, yet aware of the past and the future. I feel that I belong, that we all belong, and again, that we are all connected. Every living thing needs a home, a place to survive and to thrive. Earth is that home for all of us and tracking wildlife reminds me to never forget that we are all kin and that we all need a home.
Tracking affords me the vital perspective that all life is valuable, equally and necessarily.
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 robin 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.
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