By Sean Fagan
The gist of this post it to present tracking as the multi-faceted activity that it is. Tracking is very much about engaging your senses and mind with all the minutiae of sign left by living things. It’s often challenging and fascinating.
Oddly, the majority of tracking books are mostly devoted to the tracks and sign of wild mammals and some bird species. But what about amphibians, reptiles, even fish? What about the vast array of invertebrates (of which insects are only a part of the huge number of invertebrates inhabiting earth).
There is so much to see and investigate – so many meanings to tease out.
A common misconception about tracking is that trackers are always striving to seek one of the holy grails of tracking – a super clear print of the foot, preferably a thread of foot prints leading to the actual animal they are tracking. This level of tracking is rare, and highly skillful.
I think a lot of us are familiar with the often stunning documentaries depicting the San Bushmen of southern Africa tracking wild game such as antelopes. Often, they track their quarry until they get a kill. This level of tracking is not only very skillful but generally outside the scope of the casual, or even more serious, tracker.
But tracking (even if our life doesn’t depend on it) is a tremendously enriching, calming and immersive way of engaging with nature...
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