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?