"Imprints" by LCF Naturalist Gigi Logan

The earth is so sensitive to touch that the slightest of things can leave an impressionable imprint. These imprints are there to tell us a story, for tracks and signs are the language the earth uses to speak to us. Once you learn its ABCs the stories become more detailed with intricacies of a day’s events. Events that are privy only to the natural world and its participants.


Dick Newell (www.octrackers.com) began teaching me about tracking by emphasizing that tracking is simply becoming aware of your surroundings. If you are not aware, you can hike for miles and miles and not see a thing. Because the mind seems to spend a good part of the time on past or future events, it blurs the only moment we have…the present. By leaving the past and future thoughts at the trailhead you can hike only a few steps and begin the first page of many captivating tales.

Finding the tracks of a flicker on a sandy, dry area can tell you the flicker more than likely found an ant hill to feast upon. And if you look around closer you may even find its scat filled with ant shells and sand that was consumed while pecking at its meal. The flattened grasses that carve out a light trail tell of a highway the local animals use on their daily travels throughout the land. Scat containing red berries can be that of a coyote that had foraged a Toyon shrub during winter when this shrub berries. The coyote must have had a poor hunting day for like other predators; meat would be its first choice.

These and other stories are left for each of us to read. Some are entertaining while others have meaning and lessons about life. As I hike I now look for tracks and signs of what the earth has for me and on one of my walks I spotted a leaf on moist ground and thought…hmm is there a story underneath? Of course… a story and much to my surprise a work of art!

In nature,
Gigi