How to Learn Tracking from One of Our Greatest Predators

            “That must be Wolf you are referring to,” would be the guess of someone who knows me, because when I was young I lived with a pack of Wolves. There is no doubt that Wolf is a master predator, and the Wolf pack had adopted me and taught me much; however, I am referring to yet another Wolf. He is so common that he runs wild in virtually all of your backyards, and some of you may even have seen him.

            Let me start by relating an incident that happened one day last summer. These are the words of Stefin, a young man from Switzerland who was a student in my year-long wilderness skills program: “Tamarack, when the sun broke over the horizon this morning, it lit up literally thousands of dew-sprinkled Spider webs carpeting the bog. I don’t think I could have taken a single step without destroying a web; I couldn’t imagine how many Spiders there must have been to make all those webs!”

            Nearly everyone knows that Spiders exist, and yet few people pay them much attention, and fewer yet realize just how many of them there are. I just heard about a naturalist who claims that in most environments you are probably not more than a couple feet from a Spider. There are Spiders who travel on the Wind like dandelion seeds, there are Spiders who live underground --and there are Spiders who live underwater! From windblown treetops to the stark faces of skyscrapers, Spiders inhabit virtually every available niche. Some Spiders are active year around, even here in the Northcountry, where I see them out and about long after other insects have either frozen to death or gone into hibernation. We get temperatures as low as -30oF, and it doesn’t seem to phase the Spiders, whose bodies are kept limber by a form of antifreeze.

            They are the predators of the insect world, and some of them even act like the more familiar predators. In fact, I’ve learned many tracking and stalking techniques from Spiders, that I have used on Grouse, Bears, Deer, and Humans. By shadowing Spiders (following them and moving exactly as they move) I’ve learned the finer points of getting beyond myself and becoming the greater life-drama.

A Master Stalker

            One afternoon in my youth, I became mesmerized by a Wolf Spider stalking a Fly on a sunny windowsill. It was as though I had become the Spider; I felt the dynamic tension he had disguised by his outwardly relaxed state, and I adopted his keenness of focus, while at the same time maintaining overall perspective. Every cue, every minute movement and sound and feeling, was picked up by him, and by me, and we synthesized the information and moved accordingly.

            The more I became the Spider, the more I realized that the Spider had also become the Fly. The more I became the Fly, the more I realized that the Spider had also become the dapples of sunlight, the dust on the windowsill, the draft sliding through the crack under the window, and the birds flying by outside. We were all in this drama.... no, we all were the drama. We were in the most intimate of relationships — the beautifully choreographed dance of life and death.

            I didn’t dare blink. My senses were keened to every movement — the smallest flutter of a leaf on the branch outside the window, the appearance of another Fly that created a ripple of disturbance, the Fly herself changing posture ever so slightly. I was prepared for anything, from a slow stalk that might take another ten minutes to cover the final two inches between the Fly and me, to pouncing as fast as a sprung trap if the Fly spooked and was about to take off.

            Not being as cool and centered as the Spider, I broke into a nervous sweat. My eyes became dry and fatigued, and I worried that my movements were getting less and less fluid the closer I approached. I feared that if I pounced, my tenseness would make me miss.

            So imperceptively, so slowly, and so in synch with the greater movement, I advanced. There were times when I thought I moved the tiniest bit, but I wasn’t sure. It was as though I was a magician playing sleight-of-hand tricks to convince anyone who was watching, that nothing really happened. And yet, even though your senses could detect nothing, you knew something had to be going on, because after all, I was a magician.

            I was about an inch from the Fly and she took off. Was it me, or was it some internal motivation of hers that sent her on her way? I didn’t know, and it didn’t seem to matter. I just sat there on the windowsill, continuing to cultivate the illusion of benign presence (i.e. invisibility), and waited for the next Fly to come along.

            Why did it not seem to phase me... I mean the Spider, that he missed the Fly? A Wolf might chase ten Moose before bringing one down. Wolf and Wolf Spider possess the same hunting spirit. For them, a miss is not a failure, because they live not just to eat. If all they needed to do was grab the first hunk of meat that came along, they would grow dull and weak. By having to work for their food, they continually develop their strength and keep honing and refining their hunting skills.

            It works both ways: in exchange for the food which Fly and Moose provide Wolf and Wolf Spider, they keep Fly and Moose healthy by continually testing them, and they become quicker and sharper. In this way, only the best survive to pass their traits on to their offspring, thus insuring the health and longevity of their kind.

Web Tracking

            At about midafternoon I arrived at the wilderness camp where I was going to meet the year-long program students. Usually I’ll take what I call the teaching trail, which could be anything but the deer trail people usually follow to the camp. I will continually challenge myself by taking unfamiliar routes, which keep me honing and refining my skills, rather than relying upon old knowledge and familiar habits. Yet, sometimes I’ll cris-cross the deer trail and perhaps walk a portion of it, in order to pick up on any disturbance and check in on who might be coming and going.

            I did that this time, and as I walked into camp I saw Pam, the first arrival, sitting over by the hearth. I greeted her and told her that I heard she had arrived at about high noon.

            “How did you know?” she asked, realizing that there was no one else around to give me that information.

            “Spider told me” I replied.

            Spiders string their webs just about anywhere they can be secured. I call this the Spider web curtain. Breaks in the curtain indicate when and where animals have moved through. The breaks form a tunnel, which makes it possible to track an animal by the webs alone. The height and width of the break give the size of the animal, the type of break gives the direction, speed and mood of the animal, and the age of the break gives the time the animal passed through.

            The native tracker will rely upon one type of sign only if he has to. Many like to use the rule of three – finding three different and distinct signs that say the same thing. The fully matured tracker actually barely glances at the sign; he relies instead on what a native would call the song of the track. This is an intuitive reading, where he just knows when the animal passed by and where she is headed. Here is were tracking becomes an art form, and the tracker can move swiftly to intercept the animal, because he is not burdened by having to read the sign.

            How can you learn to read Spider webs? By asking Spider to teach you. Begin by watching her make her web. And then watch a hundred more being made, noting how each species makes her web and where, along with preferred season, time of day, and weather. Is she with young? Has she eaten recently? Does she have a food cache? Is she building a new web or repairing an old one? Each of these factors play a role in how fast Spider builds her web, and what type and size of web she builds. That is the kind of information that told me when Pam arrived at camp.

Cobweb History Lesson

            It is common knowledge that cobwebs indicate that something is either old or has not been disturbed for a long time. This came up during a weekend outdoor skills class I was running a couple of years ago. We were out on a hike, focusing on one of my favorite things: nothing. I asked the participants to point out anything that caught their fancies, whether it be animal sign, a particular plant whose edible or medicinal properties they were curious about, geological features...just anything that piqued their interests. After examining some bear scat at the edge of the bog, we walked up into the trees on a small rise. There, someone came across two den openings under the roots of an old hemlock tree.

            “No one’s been in these dens for a while,” someone commented, “Look at those cobwebs covering the openings.”

            A cobweb is merely a Spider web sheltered from the weather. Like a protected paw print, it ages differently than one which is exposed to wind, rain and sun. This protection allows the cobweb to act like a bulletin board, collecting notes from whatever passes by. Like a bulletin board’s thumbtacks, the cobweb has a stickiness that holds things to it.

            “Look at the leaves on this web over the first den,” someone pointed out.

            “And how about the feather?” added someone else.

            “This looks like a Dandelion Seed, no, it’s bigger than that, maybe it’s Milkweed,” offered another person.

            With the help of some guiding questions from me, the group interpreted these signs as meaning the den had probably not been entered since last summer or autumn, because the milkweed had not seeded yet this year, and the dry leaf was most likely from last autumn. They thought the feather could have come from this year or last year, because birds were presently in the middle of the moult.

            “Actually, we can get more specific with the feather,” I suggested.

            A cobweb’s stickiness lasts only so long; it degrades with age and the accumulation of dust and debris. We could have removed the feather to see whether it had adhered to the web itself or whether it was being held by the web’s dust, however I asked that we not disturb the web so that we could use it as a basis of comparison for the next den. “There is no shortage of cobwebs in this world,” I added, “You’ll find plenty of them to learn from, after this class.”

            The cobweb over the second den, they noticed, was only about half as dusty as the first, and it held no debris. The excavated dirt looked fresher than that in front of the first den. The group thought there was a good chance that the right-hand den was occupied over the past Winter, and that the cobweb had been woven over the den entrance since then.

            That was a good-enough lesson for me; I knew that the next time they came across cobwebs, they wouldn’t have to spend near as much time to determine their age. And I knew that those who continued listening to Spider, would eventually be able to hear the song of the track and not have to study the clues to tell when the dens were last used. The most important thing for me was that the seed of inquisitiveness had been planted, and that Spider would become the teacher.

Conclusion

            Like Wolf, Spider has been my honored teacher. I have been blessed to live with both of them, and by shadowing them I have been able to walk in their footsteps and share in their adventures. They have awakened the native tracker within me, and at the same time they have inspired me to become more my native self.

            We each have wise teachers all around us, such as Wolf Spider, so if you are not able to take to the wilderness and live and hunt with Wolves, do not despair. Take to the wilderness of a park or back yard, or even the wilderness of you windowsill, because there dwells Wolf just as much as he does in the distant wilds.