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.

Group Mind, Survival Day 3

We awoke at dawn of course, but few stirred from their fires. I curled by my coal bed, now white with ash, and listened to song sparrows and other greeters of the dawn.

Some of us were still up and moving, though -- notably the man who'd tended all our fires. He looked the most pleased of any of us to be sitting in that campsite that morning.



Then a stream of cursing jolted me fully awake - one of our German cohorts, a fellow with a fondness for foul language, was sitting bolt upright and patting out imaginary flames on his jacket sleeve. As he woke fully from his dream of burning cloth, he looked across the fire to another Native Eyes student. She had been awakened by his blue streak of curses, and now sat upright as well, staring at the charring, glowing hole, a hand's breadth wide, that her fire had opened in her sweater sleeve.

Later we realized that, though we remembered to bring our minds together in thanksgiving at every oportunity, we forgot to separate them.


We lazed and dawdled until someone went down to the creek to taste the acorn. When they came back, bag dripping and full of what we could finally call food, everyone began to move. We revived two of the night's fires, found some good flat-ish rocks, and began stoking.


One fire had lots of coals. On this we heated rocks that were about a quarter of an inch thick. We tested the heat of the rock by licking a finger and touching the surface -- if it sizzled, it was ready. We squeezed most of the water out of the acorn and plastered in on to the hot rocks. Soon the acorn turned dark and the edges of the acorn cracker peeled up. Then we flipped the crackers to cook out the water from the other side. This method was fast, but required constant fire to make more coals. The rocks didn't hold much heat.


At the other fire, we had found some bigger, bulkier rocks. We set up a sort of tripod of tall rocks around the center of the fire and placed our fairly bulky flat rock on top, over the center of the fire. Then we stoked the fire high to heat the mass of the rock. This setup took much more time to get started, but held heat for much longer than the small flat rock setup.

Both fires cranked out acorn crackers for the whole morning. The crackers themselves tasted bland at first -- which is saying a lot, since we were three days hungry by now. But chewing them for a while brought out a lovely nutty sweetness.

As we cooked, stoked the fire, and munched, we also talked. We discussed the year so far, and asked the question, "how can we make the rest of this year of Native Eyes as amazing as we need it to be?"


One of our companions who was not part of the entire Native Eyes year and would be leaving after the survival trip, had wandered off around dawn to find a sit spot. All through breakfast and lunch (the two kind of blended into each other) we were involved with our Native Eyes conversation. The topic didn't concern our absent companion, so we weren't concerned that he was missing the discussion. We saved his portion and kept talking into midday. Then, as the energy wound down around our topic, we realized that he had been gone for many hours. One of us said he would go holler for the wanderer, but got involved again in the last words on the Native Eyes subject, so no one sent out a call.

After we said the final words in our discussion, and all were ready to move on, we looked up to see our wandering friend walking into our camp.


With the bag of acorn empty of even the finest crumbs, our conversation played out, and our companion returned, we needed something to do with all the acorn-energy. We decided to finally do some exploring and move camp. We had our bowless fire drill kit still assembled, but we didn't want to have to spin up another coal that evening. So we gathered punky chunks of wood from the downed pines. Some, about as long as my arm, we used whole. We pushed one end of the punk sticks into the fire to catch a coal, then walked with that end up and out of the wind. It smoldered well until the wind came up and set the punk sticks flaming.

The smaller chunks of punky wood I ground to powder on our acorn grinding stones. I found some long concave chunks of bark and lined them with cattail fluff. Then I poured the punky wood powder over the cattail fluff, taco'd the powder in fluff, and surrounded the whole thing with a layer of bark. I stuffed a live coal in one end and tied the bark tight to restrict air flow. We carried our fire with us.


Our wander spread us out over the land. With no trail and only springy grass to take a track (actually the grass took a track pretty well, but didn't hold it for long), we kept in contact with raven calls.

Finally, we found it. The place. THE place to spend the night. A minute, narrow valley between the two masses of sandstone that sat in the grass like giant rounded loaves of dough. It was sheltered from the night winds and within an easy walk of two downed valley oaks for firewood. Dead manzanitas, too, were scattered on the sandstone. It even had water, though not the fast-flowing crystalline creek that we'd slept by previously.


After resting at the new site for some time, Team Ground Squirrel decided that we'd like to go check our traps. We took a circuitous route to admire the scenery and look for more food on the way.


When we found this beautiful pond turtle neither of us could even consider taking him back to camp for dinner. For all that his kind are our native testudine, I'd never seen one this close, and rarely seen them at all. I've only gotten this close to the pet shop kind of turtle, red-eared sliders. We admired the gold glint and patterning on his skin, and in his eyes, before leaving him in peace.


More spectacular landscape brought us back to the ground squirrel meadow, where we found trap after trap disturbed but unoccupied. Perhaps the nooses were too large, or too noticeable?


With the light taking on the gold of afternoon, both my companion and I felt the magnetism of the sun-warmed earth. We lay in the grass to rest, and my companion began to snore. I relaxed into the ground and dreamed.

When I awoke, I awoke fully and completely. I sat up, feeling refreshed, and said something to my companion. He replied that he had just woken up too and was ready to move on. We stood up and saw another Native Eyes student approaching from the direction of camp. We joined him on his walk to the creek.

Why did we both feel the overwhelming, bone-deep need for a nap at that time? Why did we both snap awake in such synchrony? If we had been asleep when the other Native Eyes person came down, would he have been able to notice us, flat out in the grass?


We returned to camp with our empty nooses and set to gathering firewood. We had two gargantuan piles by dusk, one of manzanita and one of oak. We would sleep warm.

We gathered around our fire after the last light had gone. We gave thanks for the journey we were on, and checked in with everyone. Then we settled ourselves around two fires for the night.


Before we slept we also experimented with a self-feeding fire technique from YouTube. We found that manzanita and weathered oak burn too thoroughly and too quickly. The tower of wood that, according to the video, should have taken hours to burn down took about thirty minutes. But it was spectacular.

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.

Kitchen Wisdom

We began the session with the usual wander for cougar sign. None found, as far as we could tell. We tracked eachother, the returning winter birds, the warm pools of Indian Summer sun, and the new wild radish sprouts that follow the early rain.

Back at camp, we met Matt Berry and his collection of pots made from wild-harvested clay. We were going to do the same, to have some communal kitchenware appropriate to our rustic open-fire setting. We began by digging the clay from the ground just twenty feet from our fire, and mixed it with sand (grog).



We mixed the clay by foot and by hand.



The pots were big communal affairs, with some people pinch-pot molding the pointed bottoms, some people rolling "snakes" to make coils, and some people building up the coils into pots. All were absorbed in the work, even the junior contingent. We grudgingly set asid our creations when dinnertime rolled around, to be finished at a later date.

A highlight from the next day was Matt's wild foods walk. All plant uses listed here are my off-the-top-of-my-head recollections. If you're looking to use wild plants, take one of Matt's or another experienced instructor's classes yourself, and start studying some reputable books. One not listed at that link, that might be a good starting point, is the Peterson guide to Venomous Animals and Poisonous Plants. Learn what'll kill you before (or at the same time as) learning what'll nourish you.



One of the first and most nutritious gifts of the season that we encountered were new green Stinging Nettles (Urtica dioica) sprouting by the creek. These are even edible raw if you roll the leaf so that the hairs (on the underside) face in.



Cow Parsnip (Heracleum maximum) is a common, moisture-loving native. The skin can have phytotoxins that can cause severe sunburn, but peeled stalks have been called "Indian celery."



Dock (Rumex crispus) was present as a dry stalk and seedhead, and as fresh young growth at the base of the dead stalk. The seeds are edible and are like miniature buckwheat kernels. Toasting (also known as "parching") or soaking them may utilize the seeds to best effect.



Dock leaves are rediculously high in oxalic acid, but can be boild in a change or two of water to make them more tasty. A relative, Sheep Sorrel (Rumex acetosella) makes delicious sour accents in salads. The deep, hardy, woody and yellow root is a traditional and powerful remedy for liver deficiencies and related skin problems.



Radish (Raphanus sativus) was not only springing up as new succulent sprouts. In dry places, the old woody ones still dispersed the peppery seed or stood skeletal and moldering. In some shady spots the plants were in flower (my personal favorite way to eat wild radish is to bite the flowers straight off the plant), while in others the freshly immature, spicy seed pods hung. Still other wet spots had young plants yet to flower. Radish seems to be the master of the microclimate.



Broadleaf Plantain (Plantago major) was in seed near the veggie garden. It's leaves and seeds are edible. It's also good soothing medicine for bee stings. Its cousin, Narrowleaf Plantain (P. lanceolata) is even more medicinal than edible, being very good at drawing out toxins when poulticed on a sting or insect bite.



Beaked Hazelnuts (Corylus cornuta) are not really in season now, having ripened and largely been devoured by squirrels back in mid- to late-summer. But they get a pass because they photographed so nicely.



Manzanita (Arctostaphylos spp.) berries are ending their season, but some bushes still carry the tangy, dry, powdery fruits. Crush lots of the berries in cold or hot water, strain it, and impress your friends with one of the most delicious wild ciders around.



Madrone (Arbutus menziesii) trees have started to drop their bright red berries, shown here with the big, broad, leathery leaves as well. The berries are edible and tasty raw -- I usually just nibble the flesh off the stony core. The tall trees are most noticeable from the forest floor not by their leaves or berries, but by their bark. The big ones have blocky, chunky, craggy bark on the main trunk, papery peeling wine-colored outer bark on the limbs, and sunset-gold inner bark that shines beautifully in the light. They also feel cold to the touch.

Toyons (Heteromeles arbutifolia) also have fruit lately, but I haven't seen it ripe yet. It's a shrub, represented here by it's green oblong berries and smaller toothed leaves. I've never eaten the berries, though multiple friends and teachers have said they're edible. I've heard they're good if wilted over a fire first.



And here we have Bay (Umbellularia californica) nuts, the second biggest mast crop of the season. They're shown here both fresh and roasted. They're inedible raw, and must be roasted to volatilize off some of the more noxious bay oils. Even roasted, they're strong stuff. The nuts have a chocolate-like flavor, are very high in fat, and can be ground up in a mortar and mixed with sugar for a very chocolate-like effect. But this stuff is far more of a digestive and vascular stimulant than is chocolate. Overconsumption has been known to cause effects as diversely unpleasant as trembling muscles, migraine headaches or explosive diarrhea. I've also accidentally absorbed the stimulant through my skin while cooking with the ground-up nuts, giving myself a much higher dose than I'd planned and getting none of the lovely bay flavor to justify my jitters. Though delicious, bay commands respect, patience, and careful self-observation in it's use.





The biggest and most important wild crop is of course acorns. Lots of the oaks near me have already passed their buggy first drop and are in full swing of their mind-bogglingly plentiful second drop. Acorns everywhere! I wish I had more oven racks to dry more acorns on. These here are Valley Oak (Quercus lobata), a low-tannic-acid starchy acorn in the white oak lineage. The jar in the background holds Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii), a high-tannic-acid oily acorn in the red oak lineage. One must of course wash out the tannic acid before eating acorns, as tannin can be toxic in high doses.



Finally, an early crop of Miner's Lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata)! The young leaves look much more like grass blades or chickweed (Stellaria media) leaves (and taste a lot like chickweed, too) than like the commonly recognized round leaves of the mature plant. Yum!