An Unexpected Tracking Danger

On Saturday I decided to take advantage of the dry and somewhat sunny afternoon to wonder down by Coe Clemmons Creek, which runs through Taylor Park. It's a small park that runs east to west between my neighborhood and the post office in downtown Duvall. The creek meanders along the bottom of the steep-sided gully that separates the playground from the houses that back up to the creek on the south. From the head of the park where the creek passes under 3rd Ave to highway 203 at the far western edge it's about 6 city blocks in distance and about half a city block wide. The playground and picnic area only take up about 2 city blocks, and the upper block and the lower 3 blocks are just wild. A local school group did do some cleanup and trail work along the creek a couple of years ago, and I often see teens and sometimes families walking along the creek. There are also deer trails in several areas along the street - they seem to take the steepest routes. I've been seeing a big doe with what I believe to be her 2 year old daughter and her 2 yearlings, one of which is starting to sprout some buttons on his head. The youngsters both have some interesting "cowlicks" on their sides, so it's pretty easy to recognize them. They have been a block away from my apartment, and I've seen them in various places along my walk to and from work. I've seen tracks along the street on days that I missed the deer. I started to wonder if they spent time in the lower section of the park...I hadn't really ever taken the path that goes down the hillside past the parking lot. On Saturday, I decided to take a look. I found lots of deer tracks! The path switchbacks along, and the deer have made shortcuts from the upper path to the second and third paths. If I'd had plaster in my pocket I'd have made some casts of the clear tracks I found. It was really nice to just wonder along, not taking measurements, and not having a camera along to take photos. I was just tracking for fun...and almost got wiped out in the process. Now, I'm 52 years old...I've let my hair go grey, and I've put on a few more pounds than I'd like to admit to recently. But I do walk a mile and a half to work and back most days, and I often pack groceries up the hill in my backpack rather than get the car out of the garage. But I'm no athlete...never have been, don't want to be. So, imagine me in mid path, bent over admiring a nice deer track in a muddy spot...it's deep and the cleaves are spread and the dew claws are there...and I'm thinking that the animal must have come off the hillside pretty fast. And I hear a funny noise - one that makes me think I should pay attention. So I look up and see a kid on a bike, pedaling as fast as he can, and headed right at me...he looks as scared as I feel! I want you to know that I lept - yes, lept - off the trail and avoided a collision by inches...I felt the air on my arm as he sped past. I saw admiration on his face as he went by. Now, I'll confess that it was not a graceful gazelle-like leap, but I'd have bet (and the kid would have, too) that I was not capable of any sort of leap. I guess it's just another survival skill I've learned at Wilderness Awareness School. That, and my weekly visit to my chiropractor saved me from an ugly tracking accident.

Tracker in Training

"I can track deer and turkey and horses," my sister reports that Andrew told her. "Do you know how to do it? You look for foot prints and poop. Poop is what they ate a while back"

You know, he's exactly right. Andrew is my sister's grandson, and my great nephew. He turned 5 on the 5th of January. I think he has a great future as a tracker.

In the Residential program we would spend hours looking at tracks. No pile of poop went un-analyzed. We measured, sketched, and wrote in our journals. I think it's kind of funny that Andrew knows instinctively what we spent most of a year studying.

I'm glad that he has the opportunity to play in the woods, and to study in his 5-year old way things like tracking deer and turkey and horses. He's one of the luck kids who gets to follow his passions...I have dim memories of sitting by a Groundhog (Marmota monax) den in the field by our house when I was about Andrew's age. It was near the fence that separated our farm from the neighbors peanut field.

My brother Jim and I would spend hours waiting for that Groundhog, or Woodchuck to come out. It never did...I imagine that our shadows fell over the entrance as we sat much too close.

Mom would pack a lunch for us and send us off the quarter-mile or so through the field to sit where, I realize now, she and the neighbors could both keep an eye on us. It kept us out of her way, and out of trouble. For me, it was the place I started to learn the skills of a naturalist. My brother? He's a biker dude and machinist in Oklahoma City. He lost his enthusiasm for watching large rodents as soon as he discovered wheels.

For Andrew, I pray that he always has tracks to follow, and never looses his interest in - well, poop. I'm doing my best to be a good long-distance mentor to him. I think it's time to get him started on "Kamana for Kids". He's starting school soon, and I worry that he will lose interest in outdoor things when he's surrounded by kids who wouldn't know a deer from a turkey from a horse.

It's a big responsibility, passing on the stuff I've learned at WAS. And it's exciting to think that at least one little kid can talk to me any time about tracks, and poop, and the wonder of the natural world.

Tracking Myself

I stumbled on to Tom Brown, Jr's book "The Tracker" back when it was first published. I can trace my path from where I am now right back to that book. It's a convoluted trail I've left. I almost never take a straight path to anything.

In his wonderful book, Tom tells the story of being mentored by a friend's elder Indian grandfather in the art of tracking - and the art of living. It's an exciting story, and I remember reading in People Magazine some time later that he was holding tracking classes in New Jersey. I so wanted to go spend a week in the woods with Tom Brown, Jr.

I'm a hunter...always have been, always will be. I could see the practical applications of learning from the master. My ex, the Rat B*****d, thought that he could teach me everything I needed to know about tracking. And his outdoor skills are pretty good. He doesn't have a clue about the true art of tracking.

The first time I realized that I was on the way to reading the woods, we were hunting whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in western Missouri. It was cold, the wind was blowing, and the deer were not moving much. Needing to walk to keep warm, I followed a deer trail into the deeper into the trees along the dry creek bed. Soon, I was on a reasonably fresh deer track. The regular pattern of hoof prints suddenly changed - in my imagination, I saw the deer slide to a halt, then jump several feet to the right of the path and kick up mud as it ran away...I wondered what caused the deer to bolt. It didn't take me long to locate the largish canine tracks - to this day I can't decide if they were coyote or farm dog - which intersected the deer trail. I laughed out loud when I "saw" the whole event as if I'd been there the moment the deer realized it was being stalked by a predator. That's the moment I became a tracker.

Since then, I've followed all sorts of tracks, hoping for a similar experience. By reading more Tom Brown, Jr. books, and those by Paul Rezendes, James Halfpenny and others, I taught myself the rudimentary skills of tracking.

In June of 2006 I was on-line looking for a list of Tom Brown books to give to the ladies who were going to be taking a tracking class that I was coordinating for a Women In the Outdoors day. I never did find a definitive list, but I did keep running into links to the WAS web site. It wasn't until early July that I e-mailed for information...I was intrigued by the Residential Program, which offered tracking as one of the skills of a naturalist. Of course, there was no way that I would be able to do it...I was too old, to broke, too out-of-shape, and too timid.

Check back to see how I changed my mind and came to Washington.

Note: I didn't see the swans today, but Alexia, our office bird expert says that Trumpeters are more common than Tundra Swans here...