The Curse and Blessing of the Tracker

When I first started tracking, there were no fisher (Pekania pennanti) in Ithaca, New York. The fisher, a large member of the weasel family, had been eliminated from nearly all of New York State due to trapping and habitat destruction from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Somewhere around 2007, the local tracking community noticed that fisher were starting to reappear again. We occasionally saw their tracks, and even more rarely, we saw the animals.

With fisher moving back into the area, my tracking buddy Jed and I were excited to try to find one in the Ithaca College Natural Lands. We searched for track and sign for two years until, one day, there they were: fisher tracks in the light snow. We’d finally done it! The tracks showed that the fisher had gone down into a groundhog den, which is relatively common (after they eat the resident).

Determined to get photo confirmation, I set up a motion-activated trail camera on the den and waited. After a few days, I went back and was excited to see fisher tracks leaving and returning to the den. Just knowing I had photos of my fisher, I pulled the camera memory card and rushed back to my computer. I inserted the card into my card reader and … nothing. Well, not actually nothing. I had perfectly good photos of a groundhog sniffing around but no fisher. How could I have missed my prize?

I decided that I must have set up the camera’s viewing angle incorrectly, and the fisher had emerged from the den below the frame of the lens. I reset the camera and tried again. When I came back, I felt confident I had been successful. There was a beautiful fresh track set leaving the den, disappearing off into the brush and then returning. I followed the tracks all over the woods, as it moved through the understory, went around shrubs, checked out the base of trees, and finally returned, bounding through the snow.

This time, I had brought a memory card reader with me into the field. I hooked it up to my phone right there on the spot and prepared to check out my beautiful new photos. Nothing. Well again, not nothing, just the same pesky groundhog. How had I missed the fisher again? I sat in the snow with melt water soaking through my pants as I pondered and tried to make sense of the conflicting information. There were obviously two animals—a fisher and a groundhog. But there were only photos of the groundhog and only tracks of the fisher. How could this be?

I looked at the sunshine glinting off the snow. I listened to the chickadees chatting with each other. I started laughing at myself. Yes, there were two animals. There was the groundhog, who lived in the den and enjoyed expeditions into the surrounding forest, and there was the fisher, who lived only in my imagination. I looked with fresh eyes at the now obvious groundhog tracks in the snow. Though my eyes had been seeing groundhog tracks my mind had been seeing fisher. Letting go of what I had so much wanted to see, my subconscious mind also reminded me that the pattern of the tracks in the snow were very obviously that of a groundhog and not a fisher. The way a fisher’s body moves just doesn’t make patterns like that.

There is an adage among trackers called the curse and blessing of the tracker: “You always find what you are looking for.”¹ Sometimes this is a good thing—it is what allowed the tracking community to document fisher moving into the Ithaca area and then confirm this by looking for and seeing the animals. But the accompanying curse is that it can also cause you to see elephants in the clouds. Or, in my case, a fisher in a groundhog den.

The solution to the curse and blessing of the tracker is another adage: “Always try to prove yourself wrong.” Look for fisher, yes, but when you find them, gather as much evidence as possible and see if you can prove yourself wrong. The beauty of this is that, right or wrong, you come to perceive more clearly. And with clear perception and lots of time out of doors (dirt time), your connection to the mystery and the place deepens.

I now have a real connection to that place in the forest where the groundhog lived. I’ve gone back many times over the years and good-naturedly poked fun at myself. Also, I’ve seen the den become abandoned and reoccupied several times. I’ve watched how in some years the surrounding hickory trees produce a bumper crop of nuts and in some years no nuts at all. I’ve tracked and obtained trail camera images of grey fox, red fox, raccoon, skunk, opossum, flying squirrel, turkey, and coyote—all from this same spot. This spot now has a story, and I am part of it. None of this would have happened without the help of my friends, the groundhog and the fisher.

Try: It’s amazing how working with the curse and blessing of the tracker can deepen your awareness and build more meaningful relationships to the natural world. Go for a walk outside with the idea that “you will always find what you are looking for.” Choose something and start hunting! What you choose to look for doesn’t matter: bird feathers, blue objects, golf balls, spiders, animal hair, whatever. If you play this game, you will be astounded at how often you are successful. And on the occasions that you don’t find your object, you are guaranteed to find something else cool if you are present and aware.