How to Become Invisible

The following is an excerpt from my latest book, Becoming Nature: Learning the Language of Wild Animals and Plants which can be found in Step 7, Turn Invisible and Instill No Fear. I remember standing at the upper end of a shallow pool on a tiny stream early one morning and watching a large Snapping Turtle…

Remember Nature Speak, the First Language

The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming Nature: Learning the Language of Wild Animals and Plants, scheduled for release on March 31st, and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Every plant and animal is speaking all the time. They are talking to you, and me, and all we have to do…

Rewilding is a State Of Mind

Shevik is a friend of mine from New York City. About thirty-five years ago, he came here to the Wisconsin wilds to join with a group of us latter-day Natives in a hunter-gatherer inspired community I founded that was called Coldfoot Creek. After a few months, the excitement of the new lifestyle wore off and…

Where is the Tracking Snow?

Here it is mid-December and it’s been so warm that we joke about getting out the Maple syruping equipment. Usually we tap the trees in mid-March when daytime temperatures reach the 40s, but we’re already there. Usually we have knee-deep snow by now, and at least we got a couple of inches recently, which hasn’t…

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…

Master Stalker

One afternoon in my youth, I became mesmerized by a Wolf Spider stalking a Fly on a sunny windowsill. It was as though I had become the Spider; I felt the dynamic tension he had disguised by his outwardly relaxed state, and I adopted his keenness of focus, while at the same time maintaining overall…

The Original Symphony

One of my most memorable early-morning experiences occurred recently as I sat out in the backyard to await the dawn. Before I could detect any light, a single White-throated Sparrow broke the silence by singing his species’ classic pure-sweet-Canada-Canada-Canada in an Aspen grove bordering the yard (last year I heard a White-throated repeat Canada twenty-seven…

When the Tracker and the Tracked Become One

We modern trackers envision ourselves as enacting a drama between the hunter and the hunted.  We are clearly the tracker–we have studied the science of tracking, we have honed our skills and sharpened our senses, and we focus all of our attention on the track that lays before us. A Native person sees himself more…

Zen Tracking

Tracking is in our blood. It is the first skill we practice — find mother, find the breast. We track instinctively, because tracking is as old as animal life itself — picture an Amoeba seeking a Virus to engulf or a Snail searching for a bed of succulent Algae. We are designed to track —…

An Elder Describes the Old Way of Tracking

A few years ago I presented a course on feather reading at a traditional skills gathering. At the same gathering, a colleague offered a workshop where the participants would attempt to follow the trail that he created by walking through the landscape just before the workshop.  The trail began on a sandy beach, where his…