Raccoon track
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It is early morning, on a trail not far from the city.
This day the air is fresh, crisp, and washed clean like laundry on a line. I am the first out, it seems, although other mammals have been busy in the night. I notice tracks
near a narrow spur of the trail, feathers scattered
helter-skelter, vestige of a massacre that will go
unrecorded in history books. From the looks of it, a
predator crept silently toward its avian prey, waiting,
watching, concentrating, careful not to reveal itself. But
it has revealed itself—to me. Its paw print shows four
toes and a slight cleft in the pad, which identifies the
animal as a bobcat.
What I was doing on this walk is something humans have
been doing for thousands of years. I was tracking—not to
survive as was once the case—but to enhance my connection
with, and appreciation of, nature. All that's needed is to
notice and deduce. And in an instant, you can join great
trackers like Sherlock Holmes, Henry Thoreau, Miss Jane
Marple, and Lieutenant Columbo. You begin to think about
what you see on your walk and ask, as Olaus Murie suggested
in his definitive A Field Guide to Animal Tracks, "What
happened here?"
And this does not only apply to animal tracks and
signs. Northern California naturalist and tracker Michael
Ellis takes a wider view of tracking—a view that covers the
urban scene as well—asking such questions as how did those
tire tracks get where they are, or what does a wind from the
northwest mean for future weather, or where do those power
lines lead to, or what happened in this parking lot to cause
broken glass on the pavement (a good tracker would either
park somewhere else or make sure her insurance was all paid
up)? Ellis even sees attempts to discover the origins of
the universe as a form of tracking.
As we walked and talked near his home in Point Reyes
Station, California, he gave me a tracking quiz, asking if I
knew what blue reflectors, imbedded in the middle of many
California streets (and an increasing number of other roads
across the country), indicated. "No," I replied. (Do you
know? Read on for the answer.)
The universe and blue reflectors notwithstanding, the
question of "What happened here?" can enrich any walk. "Unlike a
bird walk, you might see only two mammals on a mammal walk,
if you're lucky," Ellis said. "But you can see their
echoes. For me, it's addictive. I want to know what
everything is."
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