Ghosting Trails

After our morning bird sit this week, we gathered in the yurt at Commonweal to debrief and pull out the stories from our morning sit. Before we even considered our markings on the maps, we got into a discussion about a deer seen near the bird sit meadow, and it's interesting behavior. It had pronked away from a downslope observer and stopped at a fence. Out of sight of it's first observer, though unknowingly observed by another person upslope, the deer crouched low and proceeded to trot with a gliding motion, keeping it's body low and even with the ground, along the fence line until it came to a low point, leapt over the fence, and glided away up a ravine. This behavior in the deer ("ghosting") dominated our conversation for two hours straight. We talked about deer gaits, beta-to-delta brain states, predation and hunting, blind spots and ruts in awareness, the wisdom of very old animals, and much more besides. Through it all the bird maps lay unused on the floor. We were all engrossed in our deer trailing conversation.

After our intensive ghosting dowload in the yurt, we got the chance to go out on the land again, in small hunting parties of Essentials, Native Eyes, and Cultural Mentoring students. My group began by following the morning's ghosting deer up it's ravine runs.



We followed easy and open trails until they became choked with brambles and poison oak, and then we crawled through on hands and knees. We found a cavern of willow, blackberry, and juncus that held fresh deer beds, buck rubs from this season, and a large woodrat nest. Which of those creatures left the above marks on the willow limb?



A short belly-crawl later, we found this deer-sized hidey hole under a coyotebrush, the surrounding juncus formed into a perfect deer body mold. Through the backdoor of the hidey hole, we squeezed and inched on our bellies through a tunnel of poison oak and up the steep slope. I wondered for a split second if we were in fact following mountain goats, not deer. But deer pellets and dainty, pointed tracks led the way through the dry coyotebrush and broom-clothed cliff.

The view from halfway up the deer trail was spectacular. We inched on, and as the path began to level out, I heard a rhythmic crashing in the brush ahead. I froze, and the crashing subsided into the distance, one burst at a time. A pronking deer?

Belly-crawling through the broom toward the origin of the sounds, I began to make out a small clearing inthe brush ahead. On my feet now at the edge of the clearing, pushing the brush back, my hand came back wet. I inspected the wet branch and found freshly nipped ends. Was the wetness saliva? Or plant sap? The browse was about two and a half feet off the ground. Could it be deer browse? Or what about rabbit, or mouse? Mice could climb the broom, and we've seen rodents browsing stranger things. I was excited by the possibility that it could be fresh browse from the deer I'd just pushed off of it's daybed.



We followed the trail in the direction of the pronking deer, but quickly lost our fresh trail. We came to a stand of live oaks. There my group was thoroughly distracted by the oaks' climbability.
















We spent the rest of the day tracking the other groups over the landscape by the patterns of bird alarms around them, and trying to stay unnoticed ourselves. We tracked four seperate groups by their concentric rings, and got visual confirmation of three of them. We ended the day by racing down the hill at high speed, following deer trails into the backdoor of Commonweal Garden.

A Cloverdale Whodunnit?

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This week was the Mentoring Nature Connection intensive at Venture. I could only stay for three days of it, but in those three days we discovered a murder mystery.

We were wandering Cloverdale Ranch with RDNA Essentials and Cultural Mentoring people. Many of us found ourselves drawn to the large willow thicket just south of Gate 1 and across the thistle-filled flats (ouch!). Two of the Native Eyes crew were the first there, and led the rest of us to their finds. They scared up a day-snoozing barn owl from the thicket. The owl flashed it's ghostly facial disk at the trackers, scaring them in return before taking wing.

We circle the thicket and enter from the south. Upon entering the thicket, the atmosphere changes. The willows and blackberry vines hold the air still, moist and cool. The ceiling of willow leaves filters the light to a dim green. The hair on the back of everyone's neck stands up as we enter, feeling watched. Is the owl still eyeing us, or is there another creature still in residence?

Our first find is a flattened spot covered with deer hair, with a pile of dried black goo in the middle. Our immediate thought is: blood.



Drawn further into the thicket along a well-packed animal run, we next come to the skeletal remains of dismembered deer parts. A set of hindquarters lies spread-eagled in the first clear area. It would look painfully vulnerable if it weren't already dead. Directly west is part of a ribcage, well-gnawed and picked free of meat. Just southwest of the ribs is a shoulderblade and foreleg.





Continuing along the well-traveled run, we duck through a tunnel in the blackberry undergrowth and come to another chamber. The ground is packed flat and vegetation is worn away. A cave of vegetation shelters the most worn spot, about deer sized or a little larger. We recover some hair from the trailing blackberries. It's short, tawny, fine, and tough to break. It does not kink when bent.



The northerly breeze carries the scent of rotten meat. We leave the willow cave and circle the thicket again to the east, and then north. At the edge of the trees lies more deer parts, these fresh enough to stink. A head, complete with polished antlers. The neck may still have ample meat on it. Spinal column still intact. Ribs all accounted for, but well chewed. Forelegs tenuously attached, one flung over the eyes. Hindquarters flipped and tugged a few feet away. The little bits of meat that remain are dry, feeding mites more than maggots. Just northwest, a small pile of fibrous stuff contained within a thin, dry membrane. Guts?







Following the eastern edge of the thicket north, we come to still more deer parts. This one has antlers in velvet, an attached neck and part of the ribcage. Legs are not in evidence. The face and ears have been chewed and eaten, and ribs are present but well-gnawed. This one is old and dry enough to have a much milder scent.



We explore the willow thicket and surrounding thistle flats for some time more, looking for clues. One person finds what he calls a drag trail leading from an animal run by the road, straight up to the polished-antlered buck. We try but cannot find any cougar or coyote scat near the carnage. Finally we settle down on some soft grass at the edge of the thicket for lunch, and tell stories until it's time to return to camp.

I've put together a map of the thicket's most interestingly morbid spots. I've placed each area of interest using memory only, so they may be inaccurate. But it'll give the general idea.



In addition to dead deer and ghostly owls, there was abundant sign of other animals in and around the thicket. All the blackberry, especially the tender new growth, was browsed by deer. There was lots of deer hair caught on many blackberry tendrils.



A woodrat left scat near the willow cave, and nipped some twigs. Just outside in the thistle brush, the land was thick with vole runs, tunnels, and dry scats. Rabbit runs, browse and scat lay everywhere. Deer runs, rubs, browse, and scat, too, was littered thickly all around.

Orientation

We opened this week of Native Eyes with a wander. Breaking into groups of two, we set out for some hours to see what there was to see, get the lay of the land, orient ourselves, and collect firewood.

We saw many birds, a possible peregrine falcon, heard lots of bird language, practiced tracking, and got a little lost. We found a good view of the whole of Commonweal from the East ridge but couldn't find a good way down, so we were a bit late to our fire.








We gathered at the fire circle, newly excavated to make a pit large enough for the 9-15 of us. This year there are about 9 Native Eyes students, a new kid's group, a mentor who'll hang out with the kids all day, and more Native Eyes mentors. Our little group is multiplying!



We lit the fire with a mullein stalk hand drill I'd picked up in Michigan (it's so far outperformed any Californian mullein) and a cedar board that another of us picked up in Washington. Not exactly native, but harvested wild and handmade by us. Three of us started off helping to warm up the kit. I tried to finish and get a coal myself, but I lost stamina before the coal formed. There's still something I'm not getting right with hand drill.



Cooking dinner on the fire with so many people was a challenge. We'll need to strategize further to get this process more efficient. We also made Tuareg-style ash bread on the coals. Basic bread dough was mixed up, allowed to rise, and tasty things like sauteed onions were mixed in. Then balls of the dough were dropped straight onto the coals, where the coals had turned a little white with a covering of ash. We kept moving the bread around in the ashes with a stick to heat them evenly. They turned out delicious.



The next morning we left Commonweal early to set up our beginning of the year Tourist Test, renamed as an Awareness Adventure to take the sting off the test format. Here are a few of our stations.

We started with a denuded Ceanothus branch, sticking out into the trail. The question: What happened here, and in what season?





Next we stopped at a mud puddle. Our question here was, "how many species are represented in this puddle, and who are they?"







Further down the path, an apparently unmanned station. Backpacks and sandals lay abandoned by the trail. Finally, a bush spoke.



The stationmaster, having revealed his hiding place, introduced us to this turd on a rock. The turd on a rock was greeted with extreme interest and fascination.





After a long trail of tracking stations, we gathered at the lake for lunch, swimming, and general downtime, in which the Native Eyes crew finally got to meet and socialize with the Essentials people. We finished the day out with a game of Nutty Squirrels, which is essentially an exercise in competitive, blindfolded, gleeful buffoonery. The game is a great test of scout, ninja and/or jedi powers.