Become the Animal

The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming Nature: Learning the Language of Wild Animals and Plants, scheduled to be released this upcoming spring with Inner Traditions.

You wrap yourself in the skin of an animal and move within her movements. You see through the bright of her eyes and feel through the pads of her feet. You know how she perceives her world, her mate, and her enemies. Her hunger and her pain are yours; her lust and her courage are yours. Hear the crying of her young, feel the strain of her fears, and know the how and why of all that she does.

In order to experience this, we need to be the animal. The Kung San of the African Kalahari know what it feels like to be a Lion or an Elephant. “When I tracked with [them],” South African conservation officer Alan Howell told me, “they literally became what they were tracking.”

“Becoming one with the animal you seek,” says my friend and special investigations tracker Tony Kemnitz, “is the spirituality of tracking.” Becoming their quarry was essential for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, as it is for hunter-gatherers today. And it is equally important for us if we want to reclaim our place in Nature.

When we first Become an animal, the experience is bound to turn our view of natural processes upside down. If we were to look at fishing or hunting from the perspective of the animal, we would see that we do not catch the Fish, but rather the Fish chooses the Worm and catches himself. Instead of us trapping an animal, she decides to walk into the trap.

Becoming the animal has deep roots in Native traditions around the world. Through fasting, dreams, and rituals, often accompanied by trance-inducing drumming and dancing, people enter the bodies of animals to gain their skills or seek personal guidance. They sometimes journey to the homes of particular animals. Others will go and live for a time with animals, as I did with Wolves. These people are not outside observers—they learn and speak the language of the animals and they join in their daily activities. In essence, they Become the animals.

We all have the intrinsic ability to Become animals, which will help us find them, learn their language, and even touch them if we so choose. Some of us simply want to get to know animals on their own terms, rather than from our usual detached perspective. We might want to become better naturalists or more effective trackers. Perhaps we have deeply personal reasons for growing in relationship with our nonhuman kin. Whatever the reason, the Becoming process will take us into the heart of an animal’s existence.

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