9089 Secrets of the Forest Volume 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword

7

Author’s note

9

PART 1: Eye to Eye with the Animals of the Wild

15

Chapter 1: Stalking ~ the lessons of Fox

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Chapter 2: What the Eyes of the Wild Can See ~ about movement

25

Chapter 3: More Animal Teachers ~ the lessons of Deer and Heron

31

Chapter 4: The Mind and Body of the Stalker ~ training for the coming appointments

37

Chapter 5: Stepping into the Arena ~ seeing the world from the other side

45

Chapter 6: True Adventures in the Real World ~ animal stories

55

Chapter 7: A Call to the Wild ~ luring animals

73

Chapter 8: The Night Watchman ~ a game of stalking skills

81

Chapter 9: Stalking Tests ~ the cricket and the stalking poles

85

Chapter 10: Reading the Earth ~ the elements of a track

89

Chapter 11: The Elements of Change ~ parsing the signs

95

Chapter 12: Tracking Projects ~ the game is afoot

105

Chapter 13: The Intersection of Stalking and Tracking ~ seeing is believing

111

Chapter 14: A Gallery of John Hancocks ~ the fingerprint files

115

Chapter 15: Something in the Way They Move ~ the gaits of the four-leggeds

127

Chapter 16: “Let Me Tell You a Story,” said the Land ~ data hiding inside a track

145

Chapter 17: Acquiring a Second Skin ~ hide tanning

149

Chapter 18: My What a Fine Coat You Have ~ tanning a hide with the fur on

161

Chapter 19: The Mystery Surrounding Snakes ~ the truth about our legless friends

165

PART 2: At Play in the Wild ~ games: adventurous, academic, and around the fire

175

Author's note

177

Chapter 20: Adventures in the Deep Woods ~ playing wild

183

Chapter 21: Little Brother of War ~ the “national� game of the Native Americans.

193

Chapter 22: Quieter Games with the Land ~ aiming at empathy

199

Chapter 23: Games Around the Campfire ~ the glue of the group

205

Chapter 24: The Trademark Games of Medicine Bow ~ traditions that refuse to die

219

Chapter 25: Design in Nature ~ the detective work of analyzing anatomy

229

Suggested Reading

243

Index

245

Other books by Mark Warren

251

Chapter 1 ~ Stalking

“I was a master of discovery, flawlessly finding each immediate opening as it appeared, my gait never faltering. I felt my body coiled for efficiency, producing its own lightness of foot and quietness of pad.

My legs worked gracefully, each hind foot slipping into the track of its corresponding front foot, ready at any instant to change course so as to weave through the foliage ahead.” ~ Day as a Fox by M. Choestoe

CHAPTER 1

Stalking

~ the lessons of Fox ~ On a cold January morning I had been stalking up a mountain – moving at a snail’s pace – for the sole purpose of seeing whatever I could see. I was halfway up the slope when I came upon a jumble of large boulders. There I stopped to listen.

Against the whisper of shoals down in the river valley, the quiet of the woods was complete. I felt that I belonged here as much as any wild animal. This was a private membership earned through the act of stalking. Regardless of whether or not I would sight a memorable animal, I knew that this membership was reason enough to stalk.

From somewhere beyond the tallest rock came a rustling in the leaf litter. Something was running … fast! A frantic rabbit rounded the rock and bolted straight at me.

Abruptly it stopped at my feet and then angled off downhill, scampering out of sight toward the floodplain below. Then all was quiet.

Still unmoving and gathered in a stalker’s position, I wondered: What was the reason for the rabbit’s blundering dash? I began to parse every part of the scenario, to try to make some sense of it. Perhaps it was I who had alarmed the rabbit. If so, it must have been confused about my location. After all, the cottontail

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Secrets of the Forest: Eye At Play to Eye inwith the Wild Animals of the Wild

had practically run right into me. But my assessment was wrong. The real heart of this story was about to unfold.

Another sound materialized, this one faint but steady – a dainty, quick-step padding on the cold ground. A gray fox trotted around the boulder and began to descend the rocky debris exactly where the rabbit had passed. There the terrain was like a broken staircase, but the fox fairly glided down that uneven ramp, its lustrous rust and gray body as fluid as a marble rolling down a slanted board. The fox’s legs worked like flawless shock-absorbers, taking up each measured difference in the uneven rock. Its smoothness seemed effortless. In this descent of five feet over scattered stone, the fox had given me a master’s demonstration of body control.

The fox slowed and walked toward me, following the course of the rabbit; but where the rabbit had veered, the fox came on, passing within two inches of my left foot. I could easily have touched it with the toe of my moccasin.

Having given up the chase the fox moved around me along the contour of the slope, where I watched its feet follow a narrow and straight line at the center of its body weight, as if walking a tightrope. That was the lesson of the fox: the laser-like path of its torso while making forward progress. On the uneven ramp of broken stone, this graceful creature had shown no up-and-down bouncing on the rocks. Walking away from me, its foot placement eliminated all side-to-side body movement. All too soon, class was over.

After a few minutes of paying silent tribute to the place – a patch of rocky ground that would be forever changed for me – I absorbed the lesson into my own legs and continued up the ramp to see what else I might see.

Animals As Teachers Have you ever heard the adage: “If you get lost in the woods, watch what the animals eat and there you will find your food.”

This misguided folklore has somehow passed down through oral tradition, but it is of no use to humans. I have watched deer eat leaves of mountain laurel, a shrub deadly to humans. I have spied raccoons eating poison ivy berries and opossums gnawing at decomposing flesh. I sat with a box turtle one day as it gnawed on holly berries.

You have nothing to learn about your menu by watching wild animals eat their chosen foods, but you have everything to

mountain laurel

Chapter 1 ~ Stalking

gain by watching their methods of stealth. There is a paradox in this equation: To get close enough to observe and learn animals’ stalking techniques, you yourself have to have good stalking techniques. These chapters are designed to help you gain that audience with the true master-stalkers of the wild.

Even if you accept the theories that humans were not originally predators, stalking remains in the human equation. It is not only a means of locomotion toward something you might want; it is also an exit strategy from something that might want you!

Early humans improved their innate stalking capabilities by learning from the animals of the wild. And so shall we, as we start with the lessons of three masters: Fox, Deer, and Heron.

Proof of Waddling – To understand the fox’s rationale for keeping its feet

on a line at its center of gravity, ask your students to stand in a circle, each student facing inward. Instruct all to plant their feet side-by-side, body weight equally distributed over each leg. Give these instructions: “Now be absolutely still. Do not move until I give the signal. At the word ‘go,’ I want you to leisurely walk toward the center of the circle but be ready to stop instantly when I say, ‘Freeze!’ ” Now wait for the group to settle into stillness. When all is quiet, give the command, “Go! Freeze!” saying both words back to back. No one will have a chance to step forward, but all will see that the first movement made in walking is a decided shift to one side over the leg that will support the body while the other leg starts forward. In walking, each time we take a step, we repeat this sway, a side-to-side swagger that is most noticeable from the front view of the walker.

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At Play inwith the Wild Secrets of the Forest: Eye to Eye Animals of the Wild

This frontal view is exactly what a stalked animal sees. Swaggering, therefore, must be eliminated from a stalker’s forward movement.

Receiving the Gift of the Fox – Rather than alternately shifting your

body weight over left and right legs as you walk, bring your legs under the straightline path of your body, as if planting your feet on a straight line drawn in the dirt.

Try this first inside where you can follow a long strip of masking tape stuck to the flooring. Keep your legs slightly bent as you walk this line, make your body float with the precision of a slow laser beam as your legs do all the work to make such smoothness possible.

If you take a mouse’s point of view, you can appreciate the fox’s technique.

The back-to-front movement is not nearly as noticeable as the side-to-side movement.

Proof of the Fox’s Wisdom – Sit in a semi-dark room facing a window.

Now stretch your hand in front of you at arm’s length toward the window. Bend the wrist 90° so that the palm faces you. Squint your eyes to reduce the hand to a dark silhouette, then slowly bring the hand toward your eyes … as slowly as your muscles can manage the movement. Notice that the gradual enlargement of your hand is hardly discernable. Now change the direction of movement 90°, moving your hand to one side at the same speed. You will see immediately that this movement is dramatically more noticeable.