I spent this past weekend at the Wildlife
Research Station in Algonquin Park, standing around in below -20C temperatures,
poring over indentations in the snow, snowed-in trails of all sizes,
mysterious scrapes and holes in trees, pungent urine marks, and other clues of
animal presence. I do this kind of thing for fun as often as I
can, but this time I was participating in a Track and Sign Evaluation to
test my skills. I've been working on tracking skills in a focused
way for about two years now, perhaps peripherally for a year or two before
that. I've written previously about what drew me to this learning,
and why I find it so compelling and beautiful and important, both on this
blog and at Sense of Story. And so you might know that for the
past two years I've been involved in an apprenticeship program with Earth Tracks, spending
many inspiring weekends hiking around forests, swamps, cliffs
and fields in every possible kind of weather, learning about the ecology of
this land that I live in and about the creatures who inhabit it with
me. I've learned to measure, sketch tracks, journal, draw maps, do species
research, observe weather patterns, and tease out the stories left behind on
the land.
When the evaluation was first scheduled, I
hesitated to sign up. I had some nerves and doubt and plenty of ego to untangle
when I considered being put on the spot for my skills in this way, skills that
seemed so emergent and fragile to me. I didn't know what it would look
like and how it would feel to be required to move from wonder and speculation
to firmly committing to an answer, my own answer, to each puzzle pointed out to
me. What did I actually know? But specific goals are motivating, and risk is a
powerful teacher.
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| Our humble but cozy accommodations. |
So I found myself on a late January Friday
bunking with three other women, fortunately all of them friends, in a tiny
cabin in the woods of Algonquin Park. In between sleeping and evaluation time
out in the field, our group of ten or so participants gathered together
in the Director’s Cabin at the Wildlife Research Centre to warm up, cook
our meals, and socialize.
One of my bunkmates, Tamara, had made up study
notes for herself, and we lay in our beds on Friday evening as she read
tidbits out loud by headlamp, all of us easing our nerves with raucous
laughter.
The next morning, with feet already
freezing from the cold cabin floors (note to self: bring slippers next
time!), we gathered with snowshoes and notebooks to start the evaluation.
George, the evaluator – who had come up from the U. S. – had scouted out some
tracks and sign the day before. But nature is always in motion, and
recently fallen snow and new tracks meant that many of the questions he
ultimately gave us were spontaneously found or had already
changed slightly by the time our group reached them. With each new track,
trail or sign we might be asked: “Who made this?” “What gait is this?” “Which foot
is this?” or the all encompassing “What happened here?” Ecology, habitat,
behaviour, as well as our knowledge of track and trail patterns and typical
animal sign all informed our answers. We moved from one set of tracks to
another, each person taking as long as they needed to decide on an answer,
although the bitter cold certainly encouraged closure. Our answers we gave one
by one to George or to Alexis – who was assisting – either whispered or written
in a notebook (my preference). The evaluator’s job was to hear our answer
with a neutral face and record it.
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| Who made these tracks? |
After each group of five or so questions, George
took up the answers. Obviously, the evaluator’s tracking skills are put on the
spot as well, and there is room for debate and the occasional question thrown
out if there is too much disagreement (it is amazing, for example, how much
snowed-over moose tracks and human tracks can look alike). After the first
group of questions, I knew I would be fine, and I threw myself into the
exuberant fun and adrenaline high of it all.
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| George and Alexis, practicing the poker face. George has an excellent frost beard. |
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| Who made this Trail? |
As I knew, my weak point was bird, insect
and mammal sign on trees. On the other hand, I had some strokes of luck,
pulling an answer out of nowhere – certainly not from conscious memory – a few
times and then discovering it was right. I was struck by how often a
seemingly random guess can have a solid deductive process going on behind
it. I loved what I learned about my instincts and my reasoning process,
how good it felt to follow my intuitions on each question, and how often my
mistakes came out of not doing so. I also loved dispensing with the need
for measurement – measuring tools weren't allowed – and tuning into my
love of patterns and context to summon my answers. I checked off
correct and incorrect answers in my notebook, and although the answers are
weighted for difficulty, making it difficult to calculate a score ahead of
time, I could see as the weekend went on that I was mostly on a roll. I had
told myself that what I wanted from the evaluation was a really great workshop
– which it was – but I could see quickly that my competitive drive was kicking
in.
Among what we saw in the snow were tracks and
trails of pine marten, fisher, mink, river otter, short-tailed weasel, shrew,
deer mouse or white-footed mouse, grouse, moose, white-tailed deer, red
squirrel, red fox, and eastern wolf. On a range of trees, hydro poles and on
one plywood shed were marks from black bear, porcupine, pileated woodpecker,
and many other smaller creatures.
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| What happened here? |
Our most intense moment was being led to a fresh
moose carcass at the bottom of a slope on the side of the highway. The
next few questions set the scene: Whose tracks were leading up to it? What
did we see at the top of the hill? Was this all related? If so, how? It was
potent and moving to visualize the scene of the hunt, what might have happened
here and how. To place it within the statistics on wolf on moose predation
in the park; to feel the agony of the moose’s death alongside gratitude for the
role the wolves play in the health of their ecosystem. In the woods with senses
wide open, you can’t avoid the cycle of life and death, its solid and fleshy
reality, and the bigger knowledge that every living being, every possible
nutrient, is eventually recycled and reabsorbed into others and into the Earth.
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| A beautiful otter trail. |
I was grateful to have been part of this
experience and process. Putting myself into a situation where I needed to
decipher the clues on my own, to commit to answers and really trust my gut, and
the excellent outcome that came out of this for me (Level III Track and
Sign) gave me a huge boost of confidence in the skills I've
built up over the past few years. The testing situation put a higher stake
on using the knowledge I had in contrast to the more relaxed energy of tracking
as naturalist learning. It connected me in a deeper way to the
instincts my ancestors would have used, that I could still use, in a situation
where tracking had a stake in survival. Reflecting on the
experience in the week afterwards, I thought a lot about how to apply
that intuition, that trust in myself, to other situations in my life. Like any
experience where head, heart and body are engaged, it gifted me more
than the sum of its parts.
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| Pine marten at the back window of the Wildlife Research Station. Photo by Lianna Vargas. |
A week later, I’m driving up to Algonquin Park
again, this time with the apprenticeship program, for a weekend of a
different pace, which will be both more relaxed and more physically demanding.
We’ll get onto some moose or wolf trails, read the patterns, immerse ourselves
in the exhilaration of movement, observation and connection with the more-than-human
world. I’m glad not to be tested this time, but I know I’ll bring the energy of
last weekend forward into this one. And I suspect that when the evaluation
comes around again next year, I will be keen to do it again.
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| Me, with my usual tracking grin. |
Written By: Malgosia Halliop - 2nd Year Tracking Apprentice
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