fellow questers…

animal tracking is a wonderful way to explore the ‘wild self’… when you walk in the midst of your brethren… yes… we are animals… granted… with just a dab of consciousness… you walk into the mystery of yourself… the wild of parts of you… think of the feeling you get when you watch a bird soar or a colony of ants work… hours can pass… just watching… how our fellow animals adapt to the land we share…

enclosed is a series of videos of me tracking a coyote on my family’s ranch during an early morning meditation walk… at the ranch… i typically don’t see many coyotes during the day but this day i got lucky…

i like watching animals move through topographical ‘transition zones’… on our ranch… for instance… the ditches in the pasture are a transitional zone because it is the easiest way for coyotes to move and provides the most cover if a predator is present… not surprisingly… the coyote that i tracked went straight into the ditch… i was viewed as a potential predator…

animals are incredibly savvy about energy allocation… while traveling… they choose paths that require the least amount of exertion… in the winter… they find places to sleep that prevent heat loss… food and water is scarce so being savvy equals survival…

on a recent wilderness solo in bluff, utah… i was reminded of the importance of preserving energy… i found a place in a canyon to settle… since i anticipated rain… building a shelter was foremost… my shelter took four hours to build and sucked my most precious energy… when… in fact… i should have taken my cordage and strung up a sheet of plastic (i had this in my pack) between two bushes… it would have taken just minutes… preserving much of my valuable energy… instead i was physically weak the rest of the day and into the evening… a consequence of not calibrating properly for my precious calories…

after that trip… i reflected on how i allocate my energy… while in the back country and in the front country… it is more difficult to asses efficiency of energy allocation in a non-wild environment because the industrial grid provides so much excess that it’s easy to get sloppy… the grid is forgiving… while the wild is not…

alive,

gino

p.s. if you’re interested in learning animal tracking from a superb guide, i would recommend tony nester at ancient pathways in northern arizona… tony is not only a great guy… he’s a learned guy without the ego… you will not be disappointed…