Tracks

4 Conversations

A beautiful garden in Pennsylvania.
Most people are on the world, not in it; have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them, undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate1.


On a sleepless night, the words ran truer than ever. I understood.


The next day, I rose at dawn, shook myself alive, and headed for the woods.


I arrived just a few short hours after fox. I never met him, but I got to know him fairly well. I knew he was young, and taking his first steps away from mother. The acrid, musty smell at frequent intervals told me he was marking out a territory with his unmistakable scent. Fur caught low on a barbed-wire fence told me of his boldness, as he crept onto a field adjoining houses inhabited by the enemy. The broken wing of a young jackdaw beside the path bore testament to his skill. Here was a talented young fox, fearless and virile, and as I walked deeper into the woods I followed his trail and began to understand him as one would get to know a human through a long conversation.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.


By now, the spring sunlight had reached high enough to shoot down between the bare branches in eleven o'clock shafts. An old ash beckoned me to sit with its crooked fingers. I took my seat gladly below its eaves.


I wasn't hungry yet, so I simply sat as the ripples caused by my noisy presence quelled. Nature soon returns after the echoes of man's footsteps have faded.


Fox was not alone in the wood. Somewhere above me, a pair of blackbirds were dismantling an old squirrel drey, and making a new nest with the twigs they found. They had met early, and were busying themselves ready to bear a brood of their own. Below, deer had grazed; I could see the tell-tale stripping of grass and, further down the hill, their lies from days before. A robin came close, quizzical at the silent human intruder, before becoming wary and flying off in a jumble of alarmed song. Ants were silently making their way out, perhaps for the first time this spring, testing the air for warmth and new growth. And beside me, a real prize; just below the surface, a horde of squirrel treasures; acorns buried and forgotten. One was almost new, with no signs of rot and as fresh as the day it was buried. Unthinkingly, I put it into my pocket.


I don't know how long I was there for. I was certainly there long enough. I moved silently back to the path, and betrayed my atheism by giving thanks to whatever was there.


The human world began to creep back in; I wondered if my car was safe, and thought of the hunger in my belly and the dryness of my throat.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.


I couldn't wait to tell people about my day; about the lives I'd had a brief glance into. I'd got to know a few of those woodland characters, and I wondered for a moment why they had chosen to leave so many clues about themselves.


The answer, of course, is that they hadn't. They were just living their lives. They didn't have to make decisions about the clues they left or need to justify anything; they just did those things. And, in doing so, they enriched my life immensely.


The only people who have to cover their tracks are those who have something to hide. A burglar might mask his fingerprints by wearing gloves; a slanderer publishes in a false name; a philanderer always has a good alibi. The ones we tend to love the most appear to us warts and all, allowing us to judge their flaws as well as their strengths. When we describe someone as having a 'human side', perhaps we don't mean that at all. Perhaps we just mean that they are as open and easy to read as animals.


I took the acorn from my pocket and stomped noisily, as humanly as possible, to the edge of a bright clearing, where the late afternoon streamed down warmly. I dug a shallow hole, dropped the acorn in, and covered it. Perhaps I too would leave something to be savoured.


I walked away, whole again, and resolved never to trust one who covers his tracks.

First-Person Stories Archive

Skankyrich

27.03.08 Front Page

Back Issue Page

1All quotes in this articles are from the conservationist John Muir, who has provided a lifetime of inspiration. If you like the quotes here, you can find your own through his books or at the National Parks Service website.

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