Trackers PDX Blog

Through tracking you hone your instincts while also developing a rich capacity for logic. Logic tells me what the elk may eat in winter. This is a starting point to find the herd in the places I track. Yet as I follow their trail I often rely on my gut feelings to calibrate where I continue to look. As a wise man once said, "the book of nature has no beginning and no end." The elk are always moving, changing throughout the days, seasons and years. My gut allows me cut corners when the herd is on…

It just keeps snowing up here at the Trackers Homestead. It's a blast to so clearly see the tracks left by the residents of the Marmot Woods. Usually David and I are squinting to read a coyote trail in the hemlock needle debris or a cougar cub track across a mossy log. On these snow white days we can follow the bobcat trail with little effort.…

Sometimes tracking seems like a sideshow. I can find you a cougar trail rolling through the moss and rocks. I can find you a bear, several in fact, and show you how they move both in the shadows and in the open, and why. Yet tracking to me is not simply amazing feats of nature awareness. Instead it's a deep familiarity with those that share…

Many folks ask about the origin story of Trackers. I always offer a version as unique as the individual requesting it. I try to keep it as epic and as possible, teasing out the hero's journey from the rich roadmap of our history. Still, the reality is that Trackers is too complex to have evolved from one bright notion. It kind of…

An indomitable spirit is a survival tool few people understand, including teachers of wilderness skills. It's often confused with the hubris of dominance. Yet an indomitable spirit has more to do with listening, learning and faith that the land will care for you. To quote Miyamoto Musashi, one of the greatest swordsmen that ever lived...…