Epiphany #577: Tracking/Dreaming/Multi-dimensional vision.

Looks like snow is here to stay now and it’s hard to remember that it ever wasn’t freezing. Some of our most entertaining (and humbling) moments find us whittling at frozen carcasses or jumping around a fire half naked (one half at a time) with a washcloth full of snow. I’m still wondering how I had the idea that we would have access to showers on occasion.

Daylight is short and the long nights are filled with moonlight and insight. Dreams, visions, and epiphanies are rampant as the line between worlds becomes increasingly obscure.

One of the many blessings that came with the advent of snow is the enormous expansion of tracking opportunities.

I am quite a beginner when it comes to tracking. I have always considered it just a cool hobby for anyone whose livelihood didn’t depend on it. Two experiences this sun have completely changed my mind.

At breakfast we were discussing how to cultivate telepathy – a skill that native cultures tend to far surpass our own in. I realized that this ability is exercised by repeatedly challenging oneself to decipher ‘what is happening?’ without the use of speech. Tracking is one of the best ways I know of to transcend space by developing this awareness. When we are telepathic we give up the belief that thought happens inside our brains, or that our perception is limited by the confines of our personal, physical bodies.

…So, all that was kind of a headfull already…Then, I went out in the snow to gather firewood. I left off wolf-walking a clanmate for a moment to discover a simple scene, my awareness of it slowly unfolding into story:

“A deer came by this morning. It lay down in the snow for a time. Then it got up, pooped, and walked back in the same basic direction that it had come.

Now, I have always imagined that deer lay down in the snow…of course, they must…but I have never seen a deer lying down at all…it was just an assumption. However, there it was, right in front of me, clear as day. I was able to see that scene as though standing there! Deer comes, lies down, poops, leaves. Suddenly, I realized that a tracker transcends both space and time. This is alchemy. This is cultural evolution. This is a ‘hobby’ to wrap my life around.