Animal Tracker
“The deeper I connect with wildness, the more it feels like one immense intelligence with which we are somehow interacting. It’s a bit like falling in love.” Craig Foster
At high noon we headed out on the Chaminade nature trail, the two of us carrying our animal tracker backpacks with the basic essentials: binoculars, notepad, pencil, camera. I instructed her to use her senses of sight, smell, and hearing as we hiked. We agreed that we would move quietly without talking so as not to scare away animals, including unicorns. Brielle, my seven-year-old grand-daughter, suddenly stopped and pointed. I followed the direction of her finger with my eyes. Just over there in a sunny spot on a flat rock was a small lizard. We slowly approached quiet as can be hoping to get a closer look and a photo. The lizard stayed put. I took a breath, held out my cell phone and voila! We had another animal photo for Brielle to paste in her animal tracker diary along with her pencil sketches.
I whispered to her, “See how the lizard’s skin blends in with his surroundings on the rock. That’s called camouflage. Why do you think he needs to be camouflaged?”
She whispered back, “I think because other animals won’t eat him.”
“Yes. That’s right. Hawks, snakes and coyotes like to eat lizards.”
The week before at Bookshop Santa Cruz I had told Craig Foster, the creator of the Oscar winning documentary My Octopus Teacher and author of his new book Amphibious Soul Finding the Wild in a Tame World, that I wanted to get my grandkids involved in animal tracking. Meeting Craig, a world-renowned environmentalist, was a huge lifetime thrill for me!
In his book, which I highly recommend, he shares insights about his years of daily free diving in the Great African Sea Forest to track and understand sea animal habitats, behaviors, and personalities. He explains that the practice of tracking brings us more into the lives of animals and also benefits us because our minds and all our senses are fully focused on the multidimensional world around us.
He explains, “The whole world becomes a magical place that you are in dialogue with. As I built relationships with wild creatures in the Sea Forest and on the shore, I felt old pieces of my mind and body coming alive. I felt part of this place, connected and grounded.”
Of course, Craig knows that the more we humans connect with nature, the more we will want to preserve it, to protect and care for our planet. But from his own experience he knows how our relationship with nature will rewild us.
“Opening yourself to the wild has a way of breaking down some of the barriers that humans have erected in order to survive in the strange technological world of our making. It’s my hope that you will adapt your tracking practice to suit your environment. Make it simple and doable, a practice that, if kept up over time, will nurture you. When you remember how to speak wild, your first language, you will find that it nourishes and invigorates you like nothing else. You are an integral part of the world around you, your life is an essential thread woven into our living planet.”
We hiked deeper into the forest following the bubbling sounds of the nearby creek.
“Gigi, do you think we’ll see a banana slug?”, she asked leaning on her walking stick.
“Oh, probably not,” I replied. “Banana slugs like moisture and it hasn’t rained recently.”
Along the path we noticed a wooden pole with a small box painted red. We opened the box and retrieved a pamphlet with hand-drawn trail maps and information about species of plants and animals. We looked at the drawings together and continued tracking.
Soon the canopy of the forest closed in and the air became cool and damp. A decaying redwood tree lay next to the path among scattered golden leaves. Brielle stepped over to take a closer look.
“I see one! It’s camouflaged. It looks like one of the yellow leaves.” Sure enough, wedged between layers of moist bark, was a banana slug.
In that moment experiencing my grand-daughter’s curiosity and wonder in the wild, I felt pieces of my mind and body coming alive. I felt not only part of this place but hopeful for its preservation for many generations to come.
Capitola Soquel Times Vol 29 No.6 June 2024. Students Create Community Trail Guide…In a new community partnership with The Chaminade Resort 4th and 5th grade students created a trail guide with over 60 hours researching and spending time in nature journaling, identifying species, participating in fungus forays, birding, hiking, and enjoying mindful moments outside. The free trail guides are kept in wooden boxes built and installed by students.