A Coyote Blessing

A prospective new addition to NE this week: another participant, spending the week with us to see how NE might work for and with her. We met at Gazos beach again, our mission to get to know individual coyotes using the five measurements: length and width of the front foot in a walk, length and width of the hind foot in a walk, and length of the stride in a direct register trot. We greeted the coyote tracks as we entered the beach, and got down to business. But before we'd gone along the coyote trails, we found this mystery:


The head was missing, and it had been long since eaten by it's killer and by insects. The shears on the wing feathers, though, looked fresher, with the inner part of the feather less weathered.


The foot, also, had been sheared clean through, as if by garden clippers. The inside of the bone was still red, while the rest of the soft tissues of the carcass had been weathered to brown or gray.


We found this creature along a coyote trail, where the canid had deviated from it's trot into a walk to approach the carcass, then resumed it's previous path and gait past the bird.


We found that and more mysteries on the dunes. We took measurements and sketched individual tracks. We worked past lunch, then the brain burn got to us. One by one we dropped our journals, our measuring tapes, and our pencils. One of our number stripped to his shorts and took a swim in the surf. Another lay down and considered the sand and the sky. Two others had already wandered off in pursuit of a raccoon trail. I sat down and ate my lunch.

After our interlude, we came back together to play the cluster tracking game. Once we finished and were about to start up the beach, someone shouted "look!" We all looked up at the trailhead in time to see the coyote bouncing down the trail in a neat side trot. He zigged and zagged, looked nervously over his shoulder, and showed off many of the other behaviors we had been tracking! When he disappeared into the dunes we rushed over to find his tracks, shouting our thanks to the coyote.

Later around the fire, we talked with our prospective new member about the Native Eyes experience, and about the day. I was in conversation with the new person about how our group has tracked together for ten weeks now. We've seen eachother hit walls already. But it probably wouldn't take long for her to mesh with us-- we were crying in front of eachother on the first day.

Jon joined us at the fire and also took up conversation with our newcomer. I'll try to summarize the conversation.

In Native Eyes, we cry easy and we laugh easy too. Our journeys into connection with nature bring us into contact with powerful experiences that are our birthright. These powerful experiences make us quick to laugh, celebrate, give thanks, and make fun. For most of us, these experiences were stripped from our cultures in violent conquests generations ago. So this understanding also brings us into generations-old grief over what we have lost. For many of us that grief is close to the surface and can easily spill over in tears.

People may expect this program to work within the conqueror model of education that prevails through most of our culture. Compromise with the conqueror model helps those of us who grew up conquered stave off the grief of realizing what we've missed. But it also keeps us from the powerful nature connection experiences that give us back what we've been missing. Native Eyes is one program where they won't compromise. They notice that grief comes up, and keep up the coyote mentoring anyway.

Creeks and coyotes

The sun sported a halo on Tuesday as we started tracking on the beach. One group stayed by the trailhead to map the copious coyote trails there, and my group journeyed north, hoping to find another coyote hot spot.


Past the center of coyote action, not even a lone canid trail traveled the beach. Another critter was out, though, traveling oddly like a coyote in a straight line across the sand. The critter seemed to be moving in an overstep two-by-two pace.


For a while, the most prevalent tracks were tiny, three-toed blips in the sand. This little dude flew in and paced around at about the same cadence as the tracks, bobbing his head and scouting for invertebrate prey.


When he flew on to find more food, we found these tracks in his wake. The same tracks!


Just south of Gazos Creek we went inland toward Gazos Grill, checking for trails toward the grill's dumpster. A wide, low trail cut through the poison oak and was covered with little five-fingered handprints -- a raccoon's run. On the beach side of the road, the only larder we could find was a wild rose decked with fruit. A few coyote trails crisscrossed, but we found no scent marking or interaction.


The only scent post we found was this old bobcat latrine.


We crossed Gazos Creek flowing fast and cold over the beach sand, and found a raven party on the flat expanse.


Following the ravens, we found logs with interesting little burrows beneath them, full of little caches of sea rocket seed pods.


We continued for a long way up the beach. The high tide had wiped away all tracks.


As we moved further north, the cliffs to the east began dripping, dribbling and leaking water down to the sand. We wondered if that water would be safe to drink.



We began to notice coyote trails traveling north or south just under the high tide mark.


We found a bird kill and then another, with coyote trails veering through the scattered feathers but not pausing in their cadence.


The bird below had a fascinating bill.


Finally we came to another creek flowing from a low place in the cliffs and disappearing into the beach sand. Coyote trails upon coyote trails converged from the washed-out surf zone up toward and along the creek.



We followed up the creek, clambering over driftwood and mini waterfalls on a carpet of watercress.


Around a corner in the waterway, there was a shelf of mudstone. On the shelf were the remains of a seabird, the feathers gnawed and sheared at the base.



With some measurements of the coyote trails and a general mental map of the area, we returned south to meet up with our companions.



We spent the evening mapping our wander, building a fire, cooking and debriefing the day with Jon.

On the Hunt

This past week, we began with one simple mission: to get as close as possible to an elk (possibly the largest land animal currently living in the Bay Area), snap it's picture, and escape, all without betraying our presence. Here is our instructor, taunting us with some antlers of his own. (Actually, he was signaling an elk sighting.)


We broke into hunting parties and set out. Our second objective was to create a "songline," a story or narrative that we could relate to others. The others (Essentials and Cultural Mentors) would follow our songlines the next day, so our narratives had to be accurate, detailed, and memorable. My group found many things -- whose old burrow is this? It was as tall as it was wide, with a big throw mound. Loose soil seemed to have filled it in so that the bottom was shallow and level. Greg's head and shoulder fit in easily.


With only an hour left before we had agreed to meet up again, we found our herd of elk. A big male stood in a group of females, bugling. I snuck as close as I could in a few minutes, snapped this photo, and snuck back. I chose a route back to the trail that I thought would skirt the herd, but as I crested the rise, I saw elk ears over the grass. I ducked a bit, keeping out of direct sight of the elk, and kept heading toward the trail. Finally, I could see that a larger herd had moved on to the trail. Well, I wasn't going to get back to the cars without being noticed. I stood up and walked alongside the herd, watching their body language to gauge their comfort zone, getting close but not too close. Sometimes I got tense, thinking about their reactions to my presence, and all the elk near me lifted their heads, looking right at me. I breathed the tension away, used my peripheral vision to watch the elk and my surroundings, and let go of self-consciousness. The elk went back to grazing. I walked within 15 feet of the elk herd.


Others had amazing experiences as well. One person almost tripped over an elk calf bedded down behind coyote brush. Another stalked a bachelor herd for three hours and became so focus-locked that he never noticed the coyote that was trailing close behind him. We regrouped at the cars and returned to camp to make our fire, cook our food, and share stories.



The rest of these photos come from Abbott's Lagoon, where we went the next day in search of good clear prints in the sand. We tried to follow these trails that came out of the water and cavorted at the crest of a dune, but lost the pattern in all the frenetic movement. Who might have loped and rolled and slid down these dunes by the lagoon?



We finished up the day with a cluster tracking game of our own. A group of people acted out a scenario in the sand, then the rest of the participants came over to survey the tracks and piece together the events. This game is consistently one of my favorites. Playing the game can also help one develop an eye for understanding the previous chaotic clusters of tracks in the sand.

Shadow Scouting

A former Native Eyes student returned for this week. Nobody noticed him, even though he was with us the whole time. The above photo is from his cellphone (no zoom, sorry) and is centered on two Native Eyes participants.


We went down to Gazos Beach and examined some new mystery tracks. While we huddled around the print discussing the presence of nails, number of digits, and toepad shape, our shadow watched from the dunes.


We spread over the beach to take stock of the coyote activity and our shadow followed one group from the dunes. One coyote at the beach where we entered trotted cautiously in a straddle, then a direct register. Someone suggested that it may have felt opperessed. Further down the beach, coyote trails checked scentmarks and loped comfortably near the surf.


We met up with Cultural Mentoring to wander near the Moonrocks again, looking for deer browse, cougar sign, and fire kit materials. The deer were eating a slender green plant that seemed composed entirely of stem, no leaves, and sprouted from rhizomes near the surface of the soil. We also found the above scat, composed of deer hair. Is it big enough to be cougar?

Meanwhile our scout, having ridden along in an accomplice's truck, shadowed one of the wandering groups. He trailed them quite easily in the sand and brush when they got out of sight, following broken twigs and fresh shoe prints. He hid in plain sight using brush to break up his outline, and followed all day without anyone seeing him. At our evening meal, the rest of Native Eyes were so incredulous that they thought we made up the shadow scout story.



That evening the the staff fed the participants Ghost Supper, a ceremony brought to us by the Ottawa people of Michigan. The staff served a feast of ancestral foods, told stories, and hosted visitors at a sacred fire.

The next day, Native Eyes, Cultural Mentors, and Essentials all combined into clans to host eachother and the staff at their own Ghost Supper sacred fires. The Tule Elk Clan, who I hung out with, chose a sheltered site and creatively beautified the space. When darkness fell, the feasting was on. Stories and deliciousness abounded, as did freezing temperatures and whipping wind. A rotation of fireboys stayed up all night to tend fire, and many others kept watch with them.

I've outlined the sacred fire experiences very briefly, and haven't included much subjective experience. I'd like to invite anyone who was part of either event to share their experiences, positive, negative, challenging and regenerative, in the comments section. Thanks!

Organizing Fire

We started as usual at the beach, marveling at the high surf and puzzling over some mystery tracks. This four-legged creature apparently went from a diagonal lope to a direct register walk, heading from the dunes up the trail to the road. Please help us identify this apparent newcomer to the beach! Here are the measurements:

Lope group length: 11-13"
Intergroup length: 6-10" getting shorter toward the walk.
Stride length in a walk: 7"
Straddle in a walk: 4"
Front track compression in loose sand: 2 1/4" long X 1 3/4" wide
Hind track compressions were considerably smaller.

After exploring this mystery, we moved up to the Bonny Doon Ecological Preserve for some trailing games in the sand. We regrouped out in Jon's yard for fire, food, and a good night's sleep.


The next morning after a bird sit and debrief, we gathered with Cultural Mentoring and RDNA Essentials for a special presentation. Jon's family was hosting some natural builders from Portland who brought some in-depth fire knowledge. Their interactive presentation articulated the properties of fire as a fluid, and gave us new tools to organize the flow of fire as a tool in our daily lives.


The centerpiece of the presentation was one example of a highly organized fire system: the rocket stove. They built this simple dry-stacked brick burn chamber, and lit the fire. It burned kind of smoky and, predictably enough, straight up.


Then they took an insulated stovepipe and "organized the flow" of the hot gasses coming out of the burning wood. One good blow on the little blaze and the fire turned upside down! They explained how the stack effect helped to organize the flow of air around the fire.


The fire now burned down and horizontally through the burn chamber, and a little flame even made it up the heat riser. Extremely hot exhaust fountained out of the stovepipe.



They finished the thing by building a second box of bricks around the rear of the burn chamber, and putting a metal barrel over the heat riser to redirect the flow of hot gasses downward. Now the vaporized wood completely combusted in the heat riser and no smoky smell escaped. The chinks in the brickwork, where the exhaust was escaping, began to bead with water -- the product of complete combustion.



The presenters also built a simple, free-standing Rumford fireplace to reflect the heat of a little campfire and better organize it's flow. I'm eager to see if of some of the Rumford ideas could make for efficient fire-heated lean-tos and other primitive shelters.

Deer Days of Autumn

We began at the beach with measurement exercises, meant to calibrate our measurement techniques. Then, the wind and sun too fierce for tracking the flats, we wandered the dunes in search of stories in the sand. One group got within eight or so feet of some bedded deer before jumping them up.


We changed locations, hoping to find the remains of cougar-killed deer in some known cache spots in Cloverdale. One car parked at the gate, the others at a pullout down the road. We wandered the willows, finding scat and urine of a local bobcat, but not a trace of deer kills.


As we all gathered in a tarweed stand to pick hand drills, someone noticed a sketchy-looking character up at the car by the gate. Binocs up, we watched as the guy crouched by the car, then the car alarm went off. The would-be thief took off running and we took off too, toward him. By the time we reached the car he was long gone. We drove to the other cars and some of us took the van to go looking for the guy. I looked at my car, and found that I had two flat tires.

As I dealt with the flats using a borrowed bike pump, the trio in the van had found the thief pedaling down the street. Our eldest, gruffest character stopped the thief and watched him until the cops arrived. Then the sheriff rolled up to my car to ask us to join the whole group to give statements.

"So you're naturists, huh?" he said.

"Naturists are the naked people," I replied. "We're naturalists."

Another time, the cops asked, "So how long did it take you to get your clothes back on before you pursued the suspect?" Everyone laughed, except the guy locked in the back of the police car.

Everyone's stories matched up, and the police began loading the thief's bike into their car. He'd probably go to prison for a month, they said. I couldn't help but feel bad for the guy. Prison won't solve the problems that he was trying to fix by burgling my car. I wish him health and happiness.


The next day after a big communal bird sit, we went out on the land. RDNA Essentials, Cultural Mentoring, and Native Eyes broke into clans each with at least one representative of each program. Our mission was to track the deer activity on the land. We could then track the habits of cougars by noting the absence of deer.


My group was charged with tracking Eagle Hill and we quickly fractured further to better cover the large area. One group rambled over the open hills and gullies, finding a clan of does and bucks and following them for a bit. Another group stuck to the edge between meadow and wooded slope. My group dove into the deer trails that spiderwebbed through the woods and into the edge of the meadow. We found fresh beds and lots of browse. No cougar sign.

As usual, Native Eyes took our leave from the main group that evening. As my companion and I got into the car I pasted a piece of paper of the car's clock. We didn't want to know how late it was. As we drove I felt relieved, ignorance of the time allowing me the space to be in the moment, driving, rather than concerned about getting a good night's sleep. We zoomed past a large lump by the road, and both of us shouted "That was a deer!" We pulled over and checked it out.


He was beautiful, huge, very clean, and still warm. We put him in the back of the car and tried to call anyone who might want a deer. No one picked up.

"Want to come over to my house and help gut this guy tonight?" I asked my companion. He said sure.

After we'd gone a way, I realized that some thanksgiving might be in order. We pulled off the road again, took some tobacco, and I opened the hatchback to let the deer be in the night air. I told the deer we were taking his body from his land to my home, thanked him for the gift of his meat and hide and bones, and offered tobacco to the land in thanks.

Just as I returned to the car and closed the hatchback, hiding the deer again, a sheriff stopped and shone a light toward us. "Everything OK?"

"Yep, just a pee break," I said. The sheriff laughed and drove off. We pulled onto the road again and another sheriff's car drove past. As we got up to speed, still another sheriff's car zoomed up and passed us on the left. "We've been blessed by the sheriff spirit," my friend joked.

Further down the road, we found another deer. She was a yearling, also still warm but in worse condition. As our hands touched her body, both my companion and I had the same thought -- that she would feed a lot of other critters out here. We gave thanks for her life also, and chucked her in the bushes so the scavengers would not themselves become roadkill.

At home, we hung the buck by his hind legs, took the guts out, and went to sleep.


In the light of morning we found that he had been killed when a small section of his ribs were broken and pierced his heart. Everthing else was whole and in beautiful condition. He must have died very quickly.




I worked most of the day to quarter him up and save the parts I know how to use, which is most of him. I couldn't save the guts because it was too late at night and I didn't have the fridge space to keep them. I'll tan the hide, save the sinew for bows or bowstrings, make the hide scraps on the legs into glue, use the bones for tools, make soup and musical instruments from the hooves, and I'll use the meat in a Wopila, a thanksgiving feast for my friends and family.