Discoveries

It's only been 3 months since I've gone from being a common tracker (one who just identifies a track) to a master tracker (one who sees a mini landscape within the track that tells the animal's story). When I say master tracker, I'm not professing to have the art and science of it down; what I am professing is that I'm now able to see all those things that a common tracker misses. I used to be a common tracker, which I always saw as more of a hobby any way.

So why do I track?

Because I've learned as much about myself as I have the animals I've tracked. I'm discovering what qualities come alive in me that allows me to track in my own unique way. There is something raw about the nature of tracking. When I am down in the dirt studying a track, I'm suddenly participating in a mystery, since I may never catch up to the one leaving the prints or other sign. And it's at that moment something in me begins to change. It's as if I'm growing wild with fur or claws or a tail. I'm connected to nature/creation in a such a way that most people only romanticize about. I am living the words of the Inuit poet Nalungiaq:

In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on the earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.