OPINION: Find yourself while searching for prints

For a few years now, I have been coming to Albuquerque to study wildlife tracking. Under various highway bridges, I’ve seen the prints of badgers, porcupines, bobcats, gray foxes, coyotes, raccoons, deer and skunks. On the banks of the Rio Grande are multiple signs of beavers and shorebirds. Bear track and scat is ubiquitous in the Sandia Mountains. And over here in an arroyo just outside town: four teardrop toes, one middle toe extended past the other, palm pad more than two inches long. Mountain lion, possibly male.

This is a city rich in wildlife — and wildlife trackers. The organization CyberTracker North America often hosts evaluations in Albuquerque, two-day events in the field that assess a tracker’s skills. The local hiking club, Duke City Trackheads, has over 50 members and regular outings. The Rio Grande Nature Center and Sandia Mountain Natural History Center also have classes and activities.

Why are modern trackers drawn to this ancient art? Why stop and exclaim over the tiny prints of a harvest mouse or the robust claw marks of a jackrabbit?

The seminal environmentalist Aldo Leopold wrote, “There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.” Maybe it’s that simple. The pleasure I get in living with wild things feels pure and uncomplicated. Moreover, in learning how to identify track and sign, I enjoy a democratic thrill, something almost anyone can have almost anywhere, something you can take up at almost any age or physical condition. I slow down, bend down, look, and try to really see — using my imagination, my mirror neurons, my reading glasses. As people have done for a long time, I am matching marks and shape to meaning and story. Perhaps this is why books and email are so familiar.

My pleasure, obviously, is not reciprocated. The wild animals who leave their tracks do not care about me, except for the desire to be invisible. They want to wind secretly past my house while I am sleeping, past your house while you are sleeping. They want to be unseen, unnoticed, unloved.

Of course, we know why. We’ve killed so many of them already. It’s not just extinction. It’s the loss of abundance. In the past 50 years, the populations of more than 5,000 species of fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals have dropped by almost 70%. Humans and our domesticated livestock now account for 96% of the weight of mammals worldwide. Wild mammals add up to 4%.

This loss of abundance is something to mourn, but it’s not the whole story. Many animal species are remarkably resilient and have learned to adapt and even flourish beside us. They wind like a ribbon through our cities and towns, suburbs and countryside. Although they do not want to engage with me, I want to engage with them. I do not want to intrude on their secret lives. But I want to name them, bobcat or muskrat. I want to feel their presence.

You don’t have to become an expert. With just a bit of work and guidance, you’ll see a print in the dirt and think feline or canine and then fox or coyote. You’ll think, raccoon. Like me, you may not be naturally good at this. Perhaps we share that feeling of incompetence, a kind of learning disability in the natural world. Perhaps this is a modern problem or a cultural one. In any case, identifying the track of a spotted skunk helps. It’s a cure for all kinds of inadequacy or despair. That may be an overstatement. But I don’t think so.