At a certain point many years ago, as we turned our attention to the intersection between neurophysiology and ecology, we began seeking out mentors who were really deeply nature connected. We did this in several ways, scouring our networks for people that we knew were deeply in love with Nature, deeply comfortable and at home in the Living World, deeply attuned to the rhythms and cycles of life. And what happened, strangely, as we met more and more of these people, was that at a certain point it would turn out that they were trackers. We did not plan for this to happen. It surprised me a great deal, in actual fact.
At the time I knew almost nothing about tracking, except that learning how to follow animals through the forest by finding and following their pawprints seemed about as useful to me as learning typewriter repair. We have Whole Foods, you know, I would say, if pressed on this point. The only tracking skills I need are to be able to make my way to the meat counter, where they keep slices of the animals you are out looking for. But I couldn't get around the fact that, again and again, the people I met who had the kind of relationship with the Living World that I wanted, that I yearned for myself, had these skills. A certain percentage of them were, in fact, somewhat obsessed with tracking.
The first time that I saw a San tracker was on film. The San people of the Kalahari are one of the earth's source cultures, with a continuous oral history that goes back several hundred thousand years. Yes, you have read that correctly. And the San are acknowledged, by the people who know these kinds of things, to be among the finest trackers in the world. They can do things, consistently, that other humans cannot do. As an aside, all of the source cultures of the earth I know about, which include also the Australian aboriginal peoples, and the Lakota peoples, and possibly many others, are extraordinary trackers. Simply extraordinary.
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