Last Friday
I commented on Jeff VanderMeer’s essay for Orion, wherein he argued that it’s kind of silly to get obsessed with Bigfoot when there are real actual bears out there doing demonstrably interesting things.
I share VanderMeer’s love of bears, and finding bear tracks and sign is one of my favorite tracking experiences. Bears are genuinely interesting creatures who leave large and noticeable signs on the landscape, and of the mammals one is likely to find sign of in the Pacific Northwest, in a lot of ways they’re similar to us: curious, playful, clever, and willing to eat just about anything.
It’s also easy to see how bear tracks and sign might feed some people’s notions of there being Something Else out there. For example:
(Black bear tracks, Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.)Most of us will never get a closeup view of a bear’s feet, though images are easy to come by (I recommend a reliable source such as
Kim Cabrera or
Mark Elbroch, though—there are some really, really bad track images out there, many of them AI generated). Unless you’re a biologist, naturalist, or hunter, chances are you haven’t given much thought to what bear feet look like. As it turns out, they’re not all that dissimilar from human (though the gait is completely different, and they tend to walk with their toes canted somewhat inward).
(Black bear tracks, Oregon Dunes. In order, from top to bottom: left front, right front, left hind, right hind feet.)It’s not just tracks that bears leave, of course. I’ll spare you the poop photos, though rest assured, bears do in fact shit in the woods. Depending on the time of year and what’s available foodwise, the contents and consistency vary widely, but there’ll generally be more of it than what’s left by most other animals. They also have a habit of leaving their poop in the middle of trails (rude). Often the same trails humans use. The overlap of human and other-than-human trail use is an interesting subject in itself, which I’ll write about at some point. For now, suffice to say that I’ve had excellent luck placing trail cameras along roadways and walking paths.
(This camera along the driveway on our rural property in Washington State has confirmed the presence of many species, including this black bear.)But I was talking about other signs that bears leave. An important one is marking on trees with their claws to communicate presence and territory to other bears. I’ve seen these marks in many locations now; this set came from a tree in a forest near Woodinville, WA:
(Bear claw marks on a western redcedar tree.)Sometimes they can be hard to spot. Douglas fir bark, for instance, is so thick and flaky that you might have to look closely to see the marks:
(Black bear claw marks on a Douglas fir, Methow Valley.)When I tell people that I’m into tracking, it’s not uncommon for people to make a Bigfoot joke. That got old approximately three seconds after the first time I heard it, but in a way it also highlights something troubling about a lot of people’s interaction with the natural world, and also why I got into tracking in the first place: Bigfoot jokes are an expression of unease over not really knowing what’s out there. Other examples are worries over being attacked by a mountain lion on a hike (supremely unlikely) or being spooked by strange noises in the woods at night (admittedly unsettling, but ordinary animals make more and weirder sounds than most of us realize). Or sharing AI videos of wild animals doing things that wild animals would never do. (A mountain lion is not going to adopt a bunch of house cats. I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to know what the mountain lion would do.)
The thing is, though, not knowing what’s out there is an addressable problem. You don’t need to become a tracker (though it’s fun!) or a biologist. All you really need is some curiosity, a field guide or two, and the willingness to spend some time learning and exploring.
(Tracking can help determine trail camera placement, though, and then you can get cool photos like this.)You soon find that bears—and other animals—are genuinely fascinating. So are coyotes. And deer. And squirrels. And Northern Flickers. And spiders. And fungus.
Curiosity, after all, is something that we share with bears. And it’s a lot more rewarding than Bigfoot.
(Black bear investigating one of my trail cameras. The camera still worked afterward!)(Originally posted at welltemperedwriter. You can comment here or there.)![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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