Tracks & Trails

We began this week with a wander for deer sign, with a focus on holding eight approaches to tracking all at once. We broke up into two groups of four and each person took a directional axis. One person in each group held East-West, another Southeast-Northwest, and the others South-North and Southwest-Northeast. Then we reviewed the tracking questions that our 8-shields model associates with those directions.

East held the question "who," considering the identity of each deer around commonweal, its sex, age, and other identifying features. Paired with that was West, the community-ecology questions about why the deer came to particular places on the landscape. Southeast brought the learnings that come from experiential, body-based immitation of the deer, acting out their gaits and behaviors. And paired with Southeast, Northwest tracked ancestral patterns in the deer. Our Northwest questions helped us notice the worn-in spots from generations of deer patterns across the land and sought to understand the inborn deer energy that channels all deer through those patterns. South was concerned with trailing the deer, finding the freshest trails and following them. Together with South, North asked, "where are the deer now" and sought not only to track the living trail straight to the deer's hooves, but to be able to predict the deer's location in the present moment. Southwest asked, "what are the deer eating," and challenged us to find deer saliva still wet on fresh browse. Paired with Southwest, Northeast asked, "with what energy are the deer moving on the land?" Northeast questioning sought the bird language signatures that would speak of the intensity or mildness of the deer's personal presence, attitude, or state of mind, asking "how does it feel to be this deer, right now?".

Armed with these questions, we began our hunt.


We circumambulated Commonweal using the deer trails, finding tree graveyards, mushroom gardens, deer bones, scats, browses, raccoon and fox latrines, woodrat homes, mysterious burrows, a live yearling doe (with her saliva still on her freshest browse, according to one of the Native Eyes kids), and much more. We were also searching for entry points on the fence, hoping to be of service to the garden as well as to our own education. We found an interesting spot just above some check dams in a gully, next to the deer fence. A scuffed, smooshed patch of ground, holding oddly scraped-looking hoof tracks and deer, raccoon, and other belly fur stuck in the mud. We surmised that this might be an entry point.


Of course, we had to see for ourselves if it was possible to squeeze under the fence here.


Back at camp, we started our fire with help from the Native Eyes kids. We would need heat for our next project: Pitch sticks!


We had pitch from stone pine and gray pine, collected old, dry rabbit, deer, and goat scat, and saved some charcoal from the fire. We selected out the cleanest looking, white pitch for another purpose. The rest we popped in a pot and melted down, combining it with roughly equal parts (just looking for the right consistency, not a prescribed ratio) of powdered herbivore scat and charcoal. Then we took green willow sticks (though any stick would do) and dipped them in our bubbling black brew. We rolled the dollops of tarry goo over cool rocks to mold the goo to the ends of the sticks, and built up good chunks of the stuff on our sticks. It cooled to a very hard glassy consistency. We now have pitch to use as sealant, glue, fuel, or modeling compound when we need it!


The nicer raw pitch we melted down with equal parts beeswax and honey to make chewing gum. The Native Eyes kids couldn't get enough of the tooth-sticking mixture.

We also used chunks of pitch, set aflame, to turn a polypore fungus and forked stick into a torch. The kids enjoyed that one too.



The next day we had our morning bird sit with just Native Eyes, sitting through periods of intense alarm, tension, and oppression. We never saw a Coopers Hawk, and the Kestrel, though on the wing, kept silent. But the general sense was of a bird killer stalking the sky, causing anxiety in the birds who had to speculate on their potential killer's whereabouts. It seems like last year's pattern of oppression, particularly surrounding the Wednesday morning garbage truck on the nearby road, has continued. Were we too raucous in our wake-ups, and called in the Cooper's? Does the hawk now follow the garbage truck to exploit engine-roar-addled songbirds? Or is there something else to this pattern?

With the bird sit over and mapped, we mobilized to Abbott's Lagoon for a day of tracking the "wet weasel."


After some speculation and prediction about otter habits and habitats, we headed to the lagoon. At the edge between the freshwater and brackish pools we found fresh fluffed up sand, a sinuous, furry drag mark, and lots of tracks.




Among the frenetic confusion of tracks there was also a blob. It was slightly bigger than a quarter, shiny and wet, and emanated an odor of rancid fish. It jiggled when poked. We found other sites of rolls in the sand, and many had similar rancid blobs to one side.



We also found nice tracks of another creature, impressed in the algae at the little rocky waterfall between fresh and brackish pools.



We spent some time questing for the owner of the other tracks among the cattails and mud of the freshwater bank. We were called back too soon, but upon returning, we were sent on yet another errand. Our instructors showed us a set of cute little tracks, travelling over the sand in a consistent lope. We were told to follow it.



It tangled among the tracks and stories of many other species.



It went it's own way as often as not.







To aid in our trailing, we gave our subject a name, "Diggy Iggy Zig Zag," for obvious reasons.



We ran alongside the trail while the sun was on it and the sand was clear and fine. The trail began climbing the dunes, dipping in and out of shadow, weaving between grass clumps and brush. Where before we ran, now we crawled. As the sun dipped low, we could barely see the tracks even at a crawl. If we wanted to find the animal itself, we would have to move faster than it was moving, and it was still at it's consistent lope.

We switched to prediction, looking at the landscape and the general direction of travel, considering the temperament and prefferences of our animal, and guessed where the trail would go. We set a marker (a cattail stalk) in the sand at the last certain track, and forayed out on possible routes that Mr. Zig Zag could have gone. We sometimes took routes that held tracks of many animals, but sometimes these routes felt lacking. On closer inspection, the tracks resolved into a jackrabbit or a cluster of mouse prints, not Mr. Zig Zag, and we would return to our marker and ask again for a likely route. The next one we tried would hold a surprise of clear Diggy Iggy tracks in a wind-protected hollow, following more or less Diggy Iggy's direction and habits of travel. This way, following gut feeling and prediction, we wound our way all the way to the ocean and our final clear straight trail of Diggy Iggy Zig Zag prints.

As we charged down to follow them, a small stone came flying at us from behind a dune. We had been stalked by our fellow students, and had been too focused on the trail to notice.

We returned as the sun settled into the western ocean, the trail still dancing in our bodies and our mind's eyes.