I had the unique opportunity to participate in a wildlife trailing (following) course taught by season tracker, Casey Mcfarland, in the foothills of the Cascade Mts. in WA. Following the footsteps of mammals is ancient human art, some beleive the first language. Reading the story of a human or animal and how it interacts with the landscape creates a certain type of electricity in the body.
Our first lesson was in the Art of Seeing. They're are so many things to see in a given day, but we will really only pay attention to whats important to us. At the beginning of the day a squished or pushed over plant had little to no meaning to me. That was about to change.
Our first task was to find an follow a trail laid by Casey a few days ago. The Pacific North West is an inland temperate rain forest with a thick under growth of vegetation. We would clearly not be following tracks(footprints in the earth) in this forest. We each took turns being the point person and I was last to go. Watching people find and loose the trail over and over again was exciting and axiety producing, knowing I would be up soon.
Stepping into the point role it was time to learn to see again. Scanning the forest for what is out of place. Though the forest does look messy there is a certain order to things. I took a trajectory from the last know track, looked up and bam, I see a flipped (lighter underside of the leaves turned up) salmon berry bush, he went that way. Slowly one sign to the next trying to imagine who, what, where, and why this creating was moving through this place.
After cultivating this new vision and mind set (and eating lunch) we were then led to the beginning of a 2 day only Black Bear trail. This would be the first real test.
Starting on the side of an old logging road, we were led to the edge of the woods and were show a pushed over tuff of grass. "do you know why this is the way it is? Casey asked us. At the beginning of the day I don't know that I would have had a confident answer. Bear? Yes! This time I was first.
I dropped down on all fours and noticed a small bear sized tunnel with a few compress plants. We dove in moving from disturbance to disturbance along a rocking hill side. Wow this thing can move. It was crazy to imagine a bear moving through this environment. They are ninjas. We followed it up a steep hill and down along the ridge line taking turns on point.
Losing the trail, we were told, is an inevitable thing, even for seasoned trackers. The thing that separates good trackers, is the patients and willingness to find it again. This happened to us again and again. Going from stoked and confident to confused and frustrated. Like did this animal just vanish into this air? What happened? Stop, breath, readjust your vision and bam , flipped over bracken fern points the way.
We followed this bear around to were it popped back out on the logging road. It was fun to cruise the road know there would be a clear sign for where the bear left the trail.
That unimportant squished tuff of grass was now a beacon for where the bear would take us next.
We found the squish tuff off to the right of the trail and straight up a steep hill it went. This was confirmed by a clear left rear foot print. Finally after 2 hours of following this bear we got our first clear track!
Back into the brush we went. Looking for a slightest disturbance to indicate the path our teacher would take next.
We followed this bear up and round the ridge to a prominent mossy point. Here we found our bear made deep indentations in the earth as a sign up sent marking. Large comprehensions where this bear turned it's paw into the moss as a sign (FB post) to other bears (potential mates, territorial, etc..) as well as a nice fat berry filled scat(poop). After following subtle sign to find this is such a good feeling. No we're not crazy, we are following a bear based on the present of disturb plants.
We also found sign of cambuim feeding from out bear.
The adventure continues through a spruce forest and down the hill back on to a human foottrail.
We were coming to the end of the day and were ready to go home, but a good tracker always leaves when they are still "on trail". So we followed it aways down until we found it's final entry point knowing we could follow if we wanted to.!
