The Tracker

It is with great sadness that I learned Tom Brown Jr recently passed away. His son, River Brown, just released a heartwarming video of the impact Tom had on his students and all who knew him.

I did not know him personally, but I loved his books. I was gifted his book, The Tracker nearly 30 years ago and it introduced me to a whole new way of looking at nature.

By learning how to track, you learned the story of what that animal was doing at that particular time on the trail. What animal was it? How many toes? Feline or canine and how do you tell them apart? Was it hunting or had it already eaten? Male or female? Walking, trotting or running? And that just scratches the surface.

I had no idea you could learn so much about an animal from just a few tracks!

This book led me to his other books where I learned how the Native American who he called Grandfather, taught him many outdoor skills when he just a small child. During our homeschooling, I read these books to my kids and it instilled in them a love of nature and learning through (and from) nature.  They practiced a few of these skills on our homestead out in the pasture and learned how to stalk quietly as well. They would quietly walk up on their coworkers at the small grocery store where they worked part time (and startle them resulting in a yip and a yell!).

Inspired by the stories Tom told of his own youth of stalking up on unsuspecting campers and moving their camping equipment around undetected (right under their noses!), my kids wanted to try their new stalking and awareness skills on someone. Out in the pastures, they would stalk the pumpers who checked the gas wells. Those guys never knew the kids were mere feet away from them behind yucca or sagebrush.

I never learned how to track, due to lack of “dirt time”. I was so busy homeschooling, homesteading, tending a garden, and canning food, that I just didn’t have the time I needed for it. But I loved reading his books about it. When he published Science and Art of Tracking I bought it immediately. Things fell into place for me about the ‘how’ of tracking and what pressure releases meant. The biggest takeaway I had was how the pressure releases in the track looked and acted the same, whether it was how an animal turned a foot to shift direction or a mountain range was formed. The patterns were the same.

Someday, I hope to finally have time to go back out and spend some dirt time studying tracks. So many stories to read in the tracks of those animals’ lives. I am looking forward to it.

RIP Tom Brown. You had an impact on every life you touched, even if only through your books. My kids still remember your stories today and all the fun they had practicing what you wrote about.

See you on the trail . . .

**Note: Resellers on Amazon may have jacked up the prices of Tom’s books after his passing. You can still find them at other bookstores.