Trailing Test

This week we set out to meet Molly and Greg at Gazos Beach. As we set out, a torrential rain came down, beating the landscape into sogginess. When we got there the rain had mostly stopped, but Molly and Greg were nowhere to be found. We did have a message from them, though -- they had laid down two trails for us, and our job was to track them to their hiding places. We broke up into two teams and began.

One team got an immediate feeling, a tug in the gut, that pulled them down to the beach at a sprint. The other group, of which I was a part, watched them run down the trail, West toward the water, and hook North to disappear around a dune. We walked along the same trail, searching for a spot where either Greg or Molly might have turned off and away from the main trail.

One recent trail, rained on but with steep sidewalls on the tracks, cut very obviously off the main trail and up a clear dune. My group agreed on a tracking formation with one lead on the main trail, two flanks assisting the lead and looking for side trails, and a rear guard keeping awareness of the landscape as a whole. We progressed slowly along the trail, trading off our positions as we felt like it.

We crested the high dunes and dropped to low ground, following the trail all the while. Up ahead we saw the other group scattered over the landscape. The trail lead right through their group, and when we came along side them, they explained that they'd felt a strong tug toward this spot, ran here, found the trail, and followed it until they couldn't follow anymore. Both teams, it turned out, were on the same trail, only the other team had approached from the other side. Now we became uncertain about whose tracks were whose -- it had still been raining when the other team got to the trail, so aging was a challenge.

We spread out and spiraled from our last known track as one big, scattered group. Some ranged far afield hoping to pick up a clear trail again. Others stuck with the known trail, creeping along. Some just got bored and went wandering. One picked up a different trail and, thinking it might be Molly's, followed to within 20 feet of our instructor's hiding place but never saw them. One wandered and found a kite, and promptly lost all interest in trailing.


The group that stayed close to the original trail kept creeping along, following the feint, rained-on trail. We came to the high dunes bordering the beach, and a clear trail scrambling up them. The tracks had been rained on to the same degree as the trail we were following, and were about the same size. One of the other team who had run here ahead of us was there investigating the trail with us. She stated, though, that when she and her team had come there earlier there had been no tracks up these dunes. Despite being the right age, size and stride, we accepted that statement and concluded that we were on the trail of one of our own, not Molly or Greg. We kept on the trail and kept discussing whose it was but the idea that we'd lost the trail and were on the wrong one drained our enthusiasm.

We looked briefly but without real intention for more tracks down the dunes and onto the beach, but couldn't immediately see them. We floundered, sat in the sand, watched the kite flutter, and spaced out.

Finally Molly and Greg appeared over the dunes to the south. They told their story, laying out their trails in our mind's eyes, and we told of our experiences trailing them. We talked about our different approaches and modes of organization, what worked, and what didn't.


When we got back to Venture, we lit a fire in the tipi and were joined by Jon Young. He told stories of the Bushmen, of how they use spirit tracking and that pull in the gut as a last resort, and work to hone their physical skills to the utmost, first. He also told stories of search and rescue missions, of how one of the biggest problems in tracking lost people is sorting out the lost person's trail from those left by well-meaning but confused rescue personnel. He stressed the need for one leader on the trail to preserve the integrity of the trail and keep the rescue team from trampling the tracks. One of the final questions he posed was in reference to that "pull" in the gut that some of us felt, that pulled them in the exact opposite direction from our hiding instructors, and right over the trail that my group was following. What was that pull?

Bird Language Intensive

We met for a solid week to do nothing but learn bird language!

The week was so fully packed with bird connection, people connection, good music, good food and good learning that I cannot do it justice in a blog post. Here, then, is an average day in the life of the Bird Language Intensive, and if you want to know what it's like to live this pattern, come to one of the intensives.

A word on camp organization: Dan Gardoqui headed up the "acorn" (facilitation team), along with some of our NE regulars and special guests from the WAS and OTS community. The whole camp was organized into four clans, each of which had an acorn member as a facilitator. We sat near our other clan members in our sit area, drew our maps of the bird activity with our clans, worked in the kitchen and cleaned house with our clans. The camp was also broken up into eight cardinal and sub-cardinal directional societies, and the clans included members of each society. The Grey Fox clan, for example, had members of the East, Southeast, South, and etc. societies. We often organized wandering and tracking activities along society lines.

We got up before dawn and carpooled out to our sit area, a south-facing slope near Gazos Creek. We sat quiet and still through the dawn chorus and into full daylight, making notes on the bird activity in each of four 10-minute periods defined by raven calls from our clan leaders. After sitting, we gathered by the cars to map our findings for the morning.



We played energized, immitative games that electrified our bodies and helped us feel what the little birds felt as they foraged and fled from predators. I know the shot below looks like a massive toddler's game of Airplane with adults. In fact,it was a fast-paced, challenging and competitive game that had us all moving intuitively like little brown birds hopping from cover to feed before the hawks swooped in.



At some point in the day we debriefed the sit. An experienced bird language mentor (or two) would sit at the front of the group with all the maps and ask questions of the group. They looked at the maps, noted patterns or inconsistencies, and drew a story of the morning out of the crowd of information.





Back at the lodge after lunch, we took a break in mid afternoon for siesta time. Spontaneous guitarchestras tended to form.


The guitarchestras followed us into the kitchen when it was our clan's turn to help with meal prep. Never has a so-called chore been so celebratory.


After lunch and before dinner we usually went out on the land again. We tracked and wandered to find more information about the stories we brought back in our bird maps.



After the evening meal we gathered in the main room for lecture, stories, or music making.

The week unfolded, progressed, and wrapped up smoothly. Transitions and group logistics, though often consisting of plan B's and unplanned adjustment to outside forces, knit the day together seamlessly. With skillful facilitation and plentiful information, I found the Bird Language Intensive to be the week I'd been waiting for all year.

Hunt by Stillness

Native Eyes next met at a new location: Sky Camp, at the Point Reyes National Seashore. The area deserved its name. The trail there led through canopied forest and out again on the side of a west-facing slope, open to the ocean and the sunset.

My camera was not working so I only got one photo, on the way in.

We spent the week trailing deer and sitting by their trails in hopes of getting close enough to touch a wild blacktail. We rose at four AM with stars still overhead and owls calling. Each of us made our way to a special spot we'd found the day before, tucked ourselves into brush by the side of a deer trail, and waited.

Many of us waited motionless in the cold dawn, until the sun crested the easterly ridge. We tried not to move until the sun was high enough to warm our own shoulders. At this point, we conjectured, the deer were probably bedded down already and still hunting would prove fruitless. Some of us had close encounters with deer, others waited and saw only birds.

Next time I'd like to put more effort in finding a bottleneck site, where the deer trails all squeeze together into one large trail. Other adjustments to deer finding techniques: build a blind near the trail, to break up my outline; smoke myself thoroughly in the campfire and then find some aromatic herbs like sagebrush to rub on myself, to mask my scent.