We are fortunate to live next to the wild waters of the Wheaton river, continually shifting the lay of the land it washes. Close to our home, the river splits and flows around and through a small forested island that has become a significant place for us.
A footbridge on the edge of our garden crosses a channel of the river. From there, a trail loops around the island, witnessing the daily changes the water brings. In springtime, a seasonal stream may slowly carve its way through and linger on, leaving behind a giant pool of standing water. In the summer, a new channel may form upriver from a flash flood, cutting through the banks and moving a mass of sand and rocks onto the island. In the winter, the gurgle of ice waterfalls, muffled by the thick coat of snow, may surge from underneath, flooding our trail.
Strong winds in the river valley often pack our trail with snowdrifts.
“Going for a quick river loop”, we’ll drop as we head out the door, breaking the long hours of computer work to renew our focus. “Going for a quick dip”, we’ll call, itchy with dirt and sweat and mosquitoes, as we leave the gardens to wash off in the river. We never know what we’ll find on the trail. But it’s always nurturing, even if we don’t know why. The river loop is what keeps us sane and grounded, and the island is like an extension of our home.
We take our workshop participants there to connect with trees, and we gather with friends for a drink on the beach. Our sit spots are on the island, so we naturally go there at dusk and dawn to wander and contemplate. If we are called for deep ceremonial journeys, the island offers a safe container, with just enough challenge. This area is well-known to us, but it’s also unpredictable, both mundane and sacred. Familiar and wild.
The island sees diverse wildlife pass through and we gleefully gather signs of their passage. When summer comes, we start seeing bear tracks in the mud, and aspen stumps left by a beaver who has taken trees downriver. Sometimes, we’ll catch a glimpse of the geese resting on the sand as we approach slowly, or we’ll see mergansers riding the fast current. We’ll be escorted down the trail by warblers, thrushes, grosbeaks, redpolls, chickadees and kinglets, singing in the willows. Animals and birds converge to water, just like us.
We tread in reverence, because we know we may be stepping over their invisible tracks. But when winter comes, the blank page reveals who came by, and sometimes what they were up to. Gift of snow.
Everyday on the trail adds a new chapter to the story.
Lynx crossing the river from our trail.
The wide, furry paws of a lynx silently follow the bounding gait of a snowshoe hare. Both tracks seem to float on the snow, mimicking each other. A lone wolf scouting along the shore borrows our trail for a bit. So does a moose, their large legs puncturing the trail and moving away through the willows, pruning here and there, hooves and dewclaws embedded deep below. Where the channels meet, an otter climbs out of the open water and toboggans down into another ice hole. A dipper, standing in the shallow water, steps on a rock encrusted in hoarfrost, carving toes into it. A mouse delicately dots the snow with their tiny feet, leaving a gentle groove with their body as they run between two tunnels that would otherwise be hidden. A raven touches ground, light as snow flurries, brushing feather marks on the fresh cover. An ermine draws a slender line of twin dents in the expanse of snow, dives under a log and leaps back around in a funny pattern. A grouse, poking out of the white blanket, walks out of her bed leaving a straggly trail, and disappears. A squirrel scurrying from tree to tree packs a trail, nice and hard, clicking and squeaking.
Right there, above us.
We have crossed their path. They tell everyone who wants to hear: “The snowshoe-footed animal, with large claws where their soles meet the earth, has marched along and arrived.”
I examine the signs left by the animals with my eyes and ponder with my mind, trying to make visible the invisible. My senses are limited at this point in my evolution. I can’t hear anything at all anymore. I am also lacking the scent and most likely, the feeling sense. But I am an animal, and I’ve been training my senses back.
***
A moose borrows our trail for a bit.
A mouse delicately dots the snow with their tiny feet.
The wide furry paws of a lynx seem to float on the snow.
Detail of the fresh hind print of a lynx.
***
I first learned how to read animal signs with my friend Will, who grew up on a trapline north of Watson Lake, in the Yukon. Hiking together, I would pause to look at plants and he’d pause to look at scats and tracks. We’d meet somewhere in the middle, where animals had munched on mushrooms, gorged themselves on berries or peeled off tree bark. Over the years, Will’s acute sense of observation has helped me understand better what goes on in the wild woods, and most importantly, helped me find my place there. That is, my place among other animals.
One day, as we were hauling our gear up and down a steep bank to set up camp by the water, I commented about how much destruction we were leaving behind, our repeated passages eroding the slope into a messy, wide trail. “We’re really ruining this bank!”, I lamented. “What a terrible impact we’re making”. Will’s answer struck me: “Actually”, he responded laconically, “we make a little more impact than a sheep, and a little less impact than a moose”.
His words had brought to light the unconscious paradigm of nature-versus-culture I needed to see. I had been embracing this concept that we are meant to “leave no trace” in the wilderness. This is how I had been taught to enjoy the outdoors as a young adult. That in order to keep the land intact from our negative impact, we needed to remain spectator of the beauty around us. So I would stick to the trail with my big hiking boots, careful to not step on the vegetation. In the backcountry, I would pack everything home, burn all remnants of my presence in the dedicated fire pit, and with it, my urge to merge with the wild woods.
I had moved to the Yukon with the hope to find a connection to nature I had lost. But alone on the trails, not running into anyone for days on end, my inner city dweller was overwhelmed with the non-human vastness. Unknowingly, I was idealizing the pristine wilderness my human species didn’t deserve to be a part of, and with that guilt, came an assortment of misunderstandings about what wilderness really was, and who I really was.
A mammal who kept forgetting how to tread lightly on the earth.
Our modern world would have us treat the land in two ways: areas where everything is for the taking and areas where everything that’s left must be left untouched. This duality keeps us disconnected from nature, with no space for an integrated, respectful interaction with the land. We will always participate in some destruction, and some creation. But there is a sweet spot where we can feel our impact on the land being mirrored back to us. We feel the land’s feedback and that feeling opens a way to finding our way towards balance.
Will’s comment had triggered a chain of confusing thoughts. 6 year-old-me knew that, sitting in the creek naked, I was not separate from nature. But adult-me wearing the big hiking boots felt uncomfortable with my pace and place in the wilderness.
For me, the balance point came when I started walking barefoot.
Mammals treading lightly on the earth: bare human and snowshoe hare.
Suddenly, my hikes took a very different character. The edges of the beaten path became fuzzier and I started to deviate from it. I was not tromping anymore, but carefully feeling the change of texture and temperature under my feet as I moved from the trail to the sticky carpet of uva-ursi. I was feeling insects alive under me, plants bouncing back up after I released the weight of my feet. To protect my naked soles, I needed presence, one step at a time. My pace slowed down, and awareness of the invisible things around me increased. I became consciously tuned-in to my immediate surroundings, animal-like.
I also started finding less and less interest in reaching the top of the mountain. The purpose of my hikes became the simple act of touching the earth with the skin of my feet.
I wanted to know the feel of all that can be stepped on. The wet moss and the cold round pebbles, the slimy mud, the gritty packed gravel, the lichen, the burning sand, the tepid water of puddles. The icy water of rushing streams, the creeping mat of plants and all the poky things, laid out on the earth, that my feet could touch. I could not get enough of it. I wanted to step with my naked feet, and feel the Earth speak back through my legs.
I knew I was sending vibrations into the soil that all of nature recognized as human. I was trying to feel into that when my feet were hitting the ground. Feel what it means to be a human stepping on the Earth. In a way, that awareness was more important than whether or not I stuck to the trail. Because ultimately, this was the balance point. The sweet spot where we start interacting with while being of, nature.
***
Furry scats yet to be identified and human foot for size.
My bare feet enjoying the great outdoors with a pack of fellow bare footers.
The simple act of touching the earth with the skin of my feet.
I am mostly barefoot in the garden nowadays, but when I enter the wild woods with footwear, they are not big hiking boots, but barefoot shoes. These are thin and flexible enough that I feel through them the ground alive under me. I am happy to find that the tracks I leave behind are very similar to the ones I would leave if I still walked in my tender naked sole. These shoes carry a new scent certainly unique to humans. And animals have surely learned to recognize that chemistry by now, whenever they linger, sniffing and huffing in our footprints. They cross our packed trails, follow it for a while, and veer off to follow their own meanderings. They’ve learned to adapt to our big boots tromping most places on Earth.
Have we learned to adapt to their sensitive hooves and their fleshy paws?
***
Sometimes, animals are curious and they grace us with a heart-stopping encounter. We get to meet the author of these tracks we’ve been trying to decipher. We know them, because they are our neighbours. But they are unpredictable. Familiar, and wild.
That morning, I came out to pee and the light of the moon was still casting long shadows on the garden. I heard a loud creak that felt odd in the still, crisp air of -35°. Part of me ignored it and part of me started looking around in the semi-darkness, alert. Then I felt something else, something looking at me, to my right. I turned to look back at it, and I saw the moose. 40 feet away, standing at the bottom of the garden. Gigantic, hot brown beast with antlers. We were both facing the same direction, our heads turned 90 degrees towards each other, immobile. I wondered, “Should I keep peeing?”.
The moose was probably wondering what to do too. That lasted a few, very long seconds. When the moose started moving, it was slow motion. One leg at a time, staring me down with each gradual step. I kept staring, absolutely terrified, enthralled. Part of me wanted to run away, part of me clearly wanted them out of the garden. I was still peeing. The moose must have caught that I was not going to do anything, but also that it was best to move on, because their heavy giant body suddenly became light. They stirred so quickly, with so much ease, it felt like they were flying above the snow. They trotted away and over the fence like a ghost in the dark.
Later that morning, I discovered in daylight a mess of tracks all over the garden beds. The moose had feasted on our crops at dawn: dead stalks, shrubs and seeds poking out of the snow. They had walked around and laid down to rest, leaving a huge crater packed in the middle of the garden. It was shocking to see, the impressive signature of a moose, drawn on the blank page of snow. The tracks have barely changed now, even after several snowfalls.
Moose’s repeated visits to the marshmallow patch, digging out and eating down the sweet starchy herb.
“What a terrible impact they made”, one may say. Certainly more than I would have made as an individual human. But certainly less than the impact all of us humans make these days. I look at the chomped patches in the garden and fear for the tender elderberry seedlings we will be planting this spring. But then, I look a little deeper to find that sweet spot where the moose is in my garden and I am not separate from the garden, or from the moose. They both have their own purpose, their own impact I am only a part of. I am interacting with while being of nature.
I can thank the soles of my feet for teaching me that.
To feel what it means to be a human stepping on the Earth.