Naturalism in a Time of Post-Truth: What Tracking Can Teach Us About How to Know Things

As mass paranoia, conspiracism, and erosion of public trust has been on the rise over the last couple of years (not all without good reason, I might add), my thoughts often return to a practice that has helped me relate to information in a more sustainable way, and has in all likelihood helped me become a better, less insufferable human. This practice is wildlife tracking: which is identifying and interpreting the tracks and sign left behind by living beings.

Tracking is a micro-local (and translocal) form of forensic science and history-making that is available to many people with patience, curiosity, and critical thinking skills (or a desire to improve them). Of course, its accessibility still has its limits. But it’s far more accessible to most than is a graduate degree in history or biology—especially those of us in rural areas. In a society where access to education is incredibly unpredictable, varied, and insurmountable for some, naturalist interpretation skills like tracking need to be examined as skills that do far more than build occupational skill sets within a capitalist economy. Rather, these skills should be seen as part of primary education and enculturation, as ways to build self-esteem, resilience, and discernment.

What appear to be raccoon tracks on a multi-species trail in Eastern Washington

The charge that by this we would be turning professional scientific skills into basically “self-help” skills (a fear I’ve mostly only heard expressed by white scientists) falls flat when one thinks about this in terms of decolonizing science. Is gaining expertise in something supposed to be some sort of self-sacrifice, some sort of hair shirt that we wear? The health of the self is deeply connected to the health of our knowledge systems and ways of knowing. This much is clear at the dawn of 2021 in America. And we’re always surrounded by the earth—why shouldn’t it be our primary text and the building block of the processes by which we learn and know?

Tracking is using your own brain and body and presence on the landscape to discern historical events. I’m not necessarily talking about things like the fall of Rome, but more like what a coyote was doing in your yard early this morning (hint: they weren’t trying to eat your kids). Tracking can be speculative, yes (and it actually should be most of the time—certainty is not advised, especially as a beginner, unless you see an animal making a track!), but it shines as a way of knowing because the proof exists out there, in the form of a warm, living body moving across the earth, laying down a line of tracks and sign that snakes its way through time like a sine wave, eventually reaching you, the tracker. And if you spend enough time observing in the right places, you will eventually encounter things that ‘prove’ what these symbols of footprints, fur, scat, and other traces, “mean”… you know, if you’re into meaning and stuff.

With tracking, you learn that things become symbols after their maker has departed the scene. When the coyote’s foot is in the snow, she is making the track—it’s happening. The track means something after she is gone. And that’s where we begin to stumble—our assumptions, our desire for “action” and “drama” and certainty, our egos and pride, our Imaginations, so deprived of meaningful story that they are on self-corrective overdrive, get in the way of spacious interpretation. Whenever we are interpreting symbols, humility is imperative. We must be able to observe yet not let our assumptions take over.

SWAT teams and other special response units are often taught a variation of “Kim’s Game” as part of their training, where they describe objects in a room just based on their observable characteristics, without naming them. Yet, this type of strategic conservatism meant to prevent conclusion-jumping seems absent among so many who seem to glorify everything “tactical,” police, and military. Certainty, especially in naming what something is (as opposed to what its characteristics are), is a rookie move.

There is no doubt that the hermeneutics of tracking (which is basically a much more ancient version of the scientific method) is a method to fight disinformation. Once I watched and studied owls a little, I was pretty sure that they didn’t mean “bad luck” or “good luck” or any number of meanings listed in culturally appropriative animal “totem” dictionaries that weren’t actually written by Indigenous people. There is a lot of disinformation out there about our winged and four legged kin. And most of it is emotionally-charged and serves human-centric political and emotional purposes. Popular negative attitudes about wolves and mountain lions are good examples. How interesting it is that there seem to be so many loud-mouthed experts on wolves—with detailed knowledge down to what they look like and how they behave—given that wolves are an endangered species that were almost extirpated from the lower 48 States.

Furthermore, learning tracking achieves something else incredible—it helps us change our definition of what information is. It helps us discern signal from noise. However, the interesting thing about standing in a living landscape home to thousands of species is that pretty much everywhere your eye is able to look, anything your nose is able to smell, is ecological information of some kind! Beginner naturalists may see the forest as a “wall of green” where everything looks the same. Trustworthy meaning cannot be discerned from such a vision—the predominant feeling is overwhelm. A connected phenomenon—perhaps a coping strategy for overwhelm—is that in such a vision, potentially everything may conceal something incredible. Hey, nature is incredible right? Most of us have watched Planet Earth or seen a National Geographic cover. In popular culture, “Nature” is cut and edited so that climactic moments seem ever-present, and drama and unimaginable feats are the norm. This may move us emotionally about as far as thinking twice before littering, but it actually can end up stifling our capacity for awareness when we’re actually “in nature” or paying attention to animal tracks & sign. On a different scale, the same thing happens with our perception of politics, world events, and public life.

So eventually, we come to learn what “good” information is—which is often not just one piece of sign or evidence, but many, constellating around us like stars that point somewhere, helping us narrow down where Mystery is. And it is okay to not know, because knowledge is not something to possess like a trophy, it’s something to work towards. Sometimes we gain it, sometimes we don’t! As we excel in finding and interpreting clues on the landscape, our questions about what we don’t know, and our means of investigating them, become a little more focused. I was always taught, when I find a track or sign, to come up with a list of at least three species who may have made it. Five would be better. When I examine a track or other sign up close, I want to find three distinguishing features about that impression that lead me to rank my choices on that species list. Does this paw print show claws, or no claws? What material is this mound made of—dirt or a mix of dirt and grass? Is this scat tapered or blunt at the ends?

Anyone who is an expert, artisan, or professional in their field may be nodding in understanding as I describe these ways in which the mind is changed by an endeavor that we apprentice to. A doctor, for example, identifies information from a sick person’s body in a different way than someone with no medical training. But the infrastructure required to become a doctor today and the infrastructure required to become a tracker are very different—the former is a bit harder to access, a bit more removed from the everyday animality of our existences. A lot of people hate experts these days partially because they think expertise is impossible for them—it’s totally unrelatable and, yeah, insufferable! But when it comes to understanding how shit works in the ecology of your backyard, it’s really not out of reach. Make no mistake about it, this practice takes time to learn and hone—it’s not just like learning a language, it is learning a language. It thrives in a context of mentorship—which is hard to come by in American life unless it’s connected to a Job or a $50,000 degree. Compared to Google, it’s the slowest form of learning I know of. But I also believe it’s one of the most resilient.

One of the more brilliant (and practical) pieces of tracking advice I've ever heard was something tracker and field guide author Jonah Evans wrote: "Be wary of the incredible." As in, don't jump to the most fantastic explanation of something right away. This is a common challenge for beginners starting to learn the art and science of tracking, especially when we find, or think we find, the tracks or sign of “charismatic” animals like large or elusive predators. We want to uncover something epic, or something rare! Our imaginations can get hooked on a particular story that is maybe something we want to see, something we’ve heard that another tracker ‘saw,’ or something we think this animal does from our limited knowledge about them.

One of the most basic ways tracking has improved how I interpret data and learn is that it helps me slow down my thinking, which in turn regulates the nervous system, disrupting hyperarousal (sympathetic response). Slow down, collect empirical evidence. Observe before you orient, decide before you act. Take a step back. What’s the context? Then what’s the wider circle of context beyond that? Don’t neglect your imagination, either. Even if it seems like all logic, imagination is the secret fuel burning the fire of all that logic in the first place.

What has really boggled my mind over the years... and what my mercurial self of 10+ years ago would have been flabbergasted to hear, is that being wary of the incredible actually makes discerning the incredible more possible. This may sound like I’m knocking the imagination, or the mystical, but I’m not at all. This could be as easily a pro-mystical stance. Imagination is as important in tracking as is empirical observation and quantitative analysis—its what makes Tracking both an Art and a Science, in spite of modern attempts to separate these things. Imagination has to be deployed carefully, because it’s so powerful, and can produce so much creative momentum. To discern the incredible, we have to put in a lot of dirt time with the credible. I could name many beloved mystics of the ages who have done as much.

Anyone can make up a story in their mind to be as outlandish as they want. That’s what fiction is for! However, there are contexts when Imagination should actually be seen as a craft, a skill with the power to regenerate or destabilize truths, even whole societies. When we train our skills of awareness and observation *off the screen* and in the slow world of squishy bodies beyond the human, our capacity to imagine, and to dream, I believe, becomes healthier, and benefits life around us.

I fear this all may sound too prescriptive. It’s styled like that for a reason, but I don’t want to make it seem like interrupting disinformation is as easy as adopting a ‘new practice.’ That’s way too self-helpy for my style, and potentially, appropriative. Tracking, nor animisms, (and how can I really separate the two, for tracking is for us @queernature an animic practice) is a way of knowing. They… if I could even dare to objectify them, don’t just provide different routes to the ‘same’ information that was ‘there’ before. They change what information is to you. And contrary to—at least my—social/cultural programming—it’s not something that can really be possessed.

Let’s just put it this way. The only trackers I want to spend time with in the field are the ones for whom “information” is a stepping stone to Mystery, or to the Other. Something we can dwell in awe of, together.