Of Mice and, um, Frogs?

We arrived at Gazos Beach and found a completely different, and much smaller, pattern in the sand. The mice and other small beach denizens were out in force. But was this a mouse?


And here is a lovely bipedal hopper, with a distinct tail drag down the middle. The trail was longer than I can show with photos, too. The space between each set of two tracks was about one-half to five inches.


We spent most of the morning with our noses about a foot away from the sand.


For the afternoon, we had to get up and stretch. We walked inland, up an old dirt road, following coyote trails. We came to a spot where the texture of the road was nothing but coyote prints atop more coyote prints, but the confluence of canid trails soon dispersed again. We scouted around for more evidence of the main coyote highway, and instead found a stunningly glassy little irrigation pond just uphill.


Next to the pond, a dismembered and well-gnawed deer carcass. We wondered if it had been killed by a mountain lion or by coyotes, or was it a roadkill? And what had fed on it?


Look at that slice through the spinal column, and the chomp marks on the rib! Cats will shear the ribcage open wide to get at the choicest internal organs. But is this a neat shear or rough gnawing?


We also found this little pile of poo. It was old, and didn't hold much scent. When I poked it with a stick, it seemed fluffy, not dense, and the hair was twisted around and ropy in places. Some folks say that felid poo is dense and shaped more like tootsie rolls, while canid poo is loose and ropy and comes to a sharp point at the ends.


The two hind legs were strewn around away from the carcass and most of the meat -- and some skin and fur -- eaten. The head, neck and forequarters were still unaccounted for. The bones, too, were chewed. Would a lone mountain lion dismember a carcass? Would a pack of coyotes? Could smaller scavengers manage to drag the quarters so far?


But on closer inspection, this right hind leg shows that the femur was cleanly snapped in two, rather than crushed. That might imply a very strong blunt force, rather than the crushing bite of a predator.


We found a pretty big, goopy looking pile of short plant fibers near the pond. Next to the pile, we found stringy, membranous scraps. We thought that these were the remains of the gut contents, stomach and intestines. Popular wisdom says that cats generally eviscerate their prey and then drag the carcass away from the gut pile.



When we were done examining the carcass, we concluded that the deer had been hit by a car on the road. With at least one leg broken, it either died or was killed by coyotes and then brought up to the pond for the pack to consume. What do you think?

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.

Dogs and Cats

Native Eyes met at Gazos Beach, where the coyotes treated us to a tangle of trails. We found multiple trails braiding together and lots of urine marking sites concentrated at the mouth of a small dry creek. The urine spots became fewer and further between, the further we went up or down the beach. What does that pattern say about the coyote's territory and borders?


Our heads full of questions and our journals full of sketches, we returned to camp. We rock-boiled a big pot of vegetable soup for dinner. We heated some large round stones (not from a creek within the last year) to glowing by building a fire on top of them, pulled them out with some sticks, and plopped them in the soup. I wanted to dip them in water before putting them in soup, just to rinse off the ash, but we decided that was more effort than it was worth. The soup cooked faster than it ever would have on a stovetop.


The next morning we went south to a coastal meadow for our bird sit. When we got there the little birds were huddled in their bushes, twittering to one another. They grew quieter as we sat, and a flicker made it's rounds on the tallest trees, calling "clear!" Robins sat high and alarmed, and a mob of crows called raucously. Scrub-jays called in clumps, "jay? Jay? Jay?" The meadow went quiet a few times as well. Right before we ended, the little brown birds decided to come out and feed, and the meadow was full of little flutters. Then they all ditched it again, and one of our group saw a hawk with short wings and a long tail glide low over the meadow.


When we mapped out the sit, many of us could recognize the patterns. Our story went like this: The birds were tense and huddled in hiding because a hunting cooper's hawk was in the area. The flicker and robin called as it came nearer, and then all went silent. When that hawk left, the little birds jumped on the chance to feed, just before a second hawk (or perhaps the same hawk, having doubled back) made an entrance.


After we mapped and debriefed, we went out to an old burn site, where the land was sand and many tracks crisscrossed through the brush. Our goal was to trail deer, but quite soon into our expedition this track reached out and grabbed our attention. There were lots of deer tracks, as well as lots of human and dog tracks. This one, though, struck us as a classic cougar print.


We trailed the cougar, finding tracks here and there where they had been spared by hiker's feet, and came upon the above. There were plenty of dog tracks around to confuse matters. What was this animal doing when it made this track? Is it a dog, or a cougar moving at high speed? We drew many of the cougar tracks, took measurements, and played with different styles of sketching. Have you ever tried drawing a track life-sized?


The trail eventually led us to this scrape. The scat under the debris was bobcat sized and shaped, but the scrape was far larger. We had not seen any bobcat tracks, either. And the scat was fresh, soft, dark red-brown, smelling of meat and cat turd, and had very little, but still some, deer hair content. Why did the cat mark this area? Why does the scat have so little hair in it? Why is the scat so small?



We took our photos and our sketches and returned to camp for the night. We fleshed some rabbit hides in preparation for a future activity, then shared food and stories around the fire.

Ask Permission

We started the week out on the beach, following coyote trails as they came together, dug, scented, and parted. We examined their patterns at length and wondered why their gaits, trajectories, and points of interest varied so widely. With few answers, we headed back to our sit meadow for more tracking of the landscape.


At the meadow, we dove past the poison oak periphery and into the wooded ravine. we found a wide trail, fluffed up like a freshly used deer trail but not cut into the earth, with very large compressions. Human boot prints? Wild pig?


That evening around the fire we told the stories of the beach and the ravine, and received a challenge. Could we see the coyotes that cavorted on the beach? We decided to rise at 3:00 AM and find out. Toting sleeping bags, blankets, coffee and binocs, we paused at the trailhead down to the beach to admire the moon on the water, to give thanks for the coming day and the animals we were tracking, and to become present to our senses and to the moment. We settled into our spots and waited.


When the sun crested the Coast Ranges and spilled light onto the sand, we still had not seen another mammalian visitor on the beach. We climbed out of dune and bluff to investigate the trails anyway. We only found one coyote trail that morning, it's patterns very different from the cavorting we'd seen the day before. Was he nervously looking over his shoulder? What kept stopping him in his crisp direct register trot and drawing his gaze away from the direction of travel?

This coyote trail had already been laid down when we arrived. The tracks lead down to the beach, where they're washed away near the high tide mark. Our arrival was considerably later than high tide.



But up the beach, the cavorting had continued. They simply avoided our stakeout, and kept up their digging and romping further north. When we related the story to Jon Young, he laughed and said simply "You got served! Did you remember to ask permission?" We had not remembered.

Moving the Tracks

We started the day at Venture, gathering scat. We collected as many examples of animal (not domestic or human) scat as we could find and brought them back to the group, assembling them together into a Poo-seum. We shared field guides and got down to the task of journaling the scats. We listed all the information we knew about the scat, sketched it with measurements, and listed possible species. Then for each possible species, we listed three reasons why is could be that animal, and three reasons why not. Here's an example:


Our Poo-seum was the center of much bustle and activity.


We had to end our scat study earlier than anyone wanted, because we were going out on the land again, this time to journal tracks. We piled into cars and drove to the nearby lagoon. Its outlet to the ocean had been blocked by sand, and it was filling up with fast with fresh water. Most of our favorite spots were unerwater, but the dunes still held beautiful soft sand, and the sun was slanting at the perfect angle.




Here's an attempt at reproducing these tracks in a life-sized sketch of the track itself and the gait pattern:



The next day we moved out early to Gazos Beach for a morning of tracking stations. Groups of 2-3, with some Native Eyes people and some staff, chose spots on the landscape to focus on. The Cultural Mentors and Essentials people would break up into groups, too, and rotate through each of our stations. Every station had a different story to tell, but many told them in similar ways. The rhythm of bobcat paws rang from the dunes as people tapped in time to the trails. People transformed into coyotes and raccoons as we tracked. We ran along on all fours and imitated the patterns in the sand.


This was a new trail to me. It was about two feet wide, to the west (oceanside) of the dunes. No people had been over there making strange tracks, so what was it?

One group followed a long, consistent canid trail, letting the rhythm of the trail move in their bodies, bouncing along the line like a pack of coyotes in step. But the rhythm broke and lead coyote-person stopped, crouched down, and studied the ground. Everyone clustered around, finding their consistent trail all tangled up in a cluster of tracks. Someone said they saw a stop there, with all four of the canid's feet on the ground. Others wondered where the animal had gone, as the long orderly trail simply seemed to disappear. Then we noticed a chunk of stuff, framed by two of the canid's forepaws:


This Mystery Chunk consisted of short plant fibers, all packed tightly together. It weathered to orange-brown, but inside it was still green, and smelled of aromatic herbs. There was a clump of soft grey rabbitty looking fur stuck to the outside, and when we picked up the chunk, some round rabbit scat pellets rolled out. What was it? Why had the canid changed its pattern so sharply near it? Where had the canid gone afterward?



After our tracking morning, we ended the day at the nearby tidepools, catching crabs, poking sea anemones, tasting seaweed, and gathering mussels for dinner. We ended the day bone-tired and well nourished.