On Track

Saturday morning we woke up at the crack of eight a.m. so we could be at Shevlin Park, west of Bend, by nine o'clock. Most Saturdays I'm lucky to be up by nine, let alone out of the house.

We were drawn there by an event listing in the paper for a free class called, if I recall, "The Art of Tracking", in which we would learn about tracking animals while hiking trails. It was put on by Trackers Northwest, the Coyote Trails School of Nature, and the Bend Tracking Club.

About two dozen people showed up, and the leaders began by having everyone introduce themselves, followed by a short orientation in which we were advised to walk quietly, avoid stepping on the tracks we were looking for, to think like an animal, and to give thanks for the birds and the bees and the animals and the trees and so forth. It stopped short of promoting a spiritual perspective of the planet, which is good. The fact is, I do feel spiritual about the planet and its inhabitants, and I feel a one-ness with Nature, but I don't like people telling me to be that way.

We broke up into groups of about a half-dozen each. Our group's leader was Tony, who was knowledgable and passionate about tracking. He gave us many tips on tracking, on how to analyze scat, and how to guess what an animal was doing based on its signs.

The weather was great. We loved the hike and Shevlin Park, which we hadn't been to before. We'll have to go back to look for geo-caches. The most interesting thing we learned was about the bark of the ponderosa pine, pictured above. If you put your nose up to the bark, it has an incredibly wonderful aroma. It smells like vanilla! We tried this ourselves, and it reminded me of ice cream cones.

Another item I found interesting was that if you chew on pine needles, it leaves a nice after-taste. You can also brew tea from them, but we haven't tried that.

Tony picked up some scat and sniffed it. He guessed it to be bobcat scat, and offered it to us to sample. I declined.


Posted by Dave    Blog Tag: Chatter