She saw me before I saw her. I wouldn’t have seen her at all, except a chilly breeze picked up after the sun dropped down behind the hillside. I shivered and bent down to pull my jacket from my pack. As I started to stand back up, my eyes came up to meet hers—almond shaped hazel eyes of a beautiful female bobcat. She stared at me from behind a few blades of June-dried golden grasses, mere feet from the trail. The tones and dark spots in her fur blended seamlessly into the palette of the summer landscape. When she angled one of her ears to hear me better, I could see the white spot on the back. She opened her mouth and stuck her tongue out, something cats do to smell-taste. She does not have the luxury of not noticing the human first. Most animals are aware of us all the time. They know because they have to know. Their life depends on it. But it was not so long ago that all humans did this too. We did it because we had too, our very survival also depended on it. We did it the same way the bobcat did it—we made full use of all of our senses to heighten our awareness of our surroundings. We evolved to be successful at it. The skill of tracking has been largely lost to modern humans but as more people are craving a more intimate connection to nature, there has been a resurgence of interest in reclaiming this practice. 

“Tracking, at its surface, is simply the art of identifying animals by their footprints. But if you scratch this surface, tracking will take you on a journey deep into the heart of nature and into your own heart as well,” writes Richard in his book The Heart of Tracking.

The evening I encountered this bobcat I’d been sitting in one spot very still on the edge of a hillside for well over an hour, watching a white tailed kite hunt the field below. As the last light was fading from the sky I finally got up and began to slowly walk down the trail, going as far into my senses as possible.