Walking with Coyotes

Our minds will often latch onto a thought so completely that the thought itself becomes its own filter, sifting out everything else. As the saying goes, if a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are his pockets. Thousands of years ago, the Buddha drew upon this tendency to formulate his concept of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), one of the fundamental characteristics of human existence. Our untrained minds focus so completely on what we don’t like, or on worrying that we will lose something that we do like, that we are not able to see all the beauty and resources that surround us and are always immediately available. Our ears will not pick up the subtle songs of nature, and we miss the quiet voices within ourselves, drowned out through the filter of our louder limiting thoughts and beliefs.

Some years ago, I went wandering in a floodplain forest near my house, intent on finding animal tracks. Soon, I came upon a beautiful line of coyote prints and was immediately hooked. My agenda had been to find a great set of tracks to follow, and I found them. As I moved along the trail, my mental focus locked on the prints as I reveled in “reliving” a stretch of time in the lives of this pair of coyotes. In a flat area, the two walked along almost next to each other until the bigger one veered off to the right to investigate something interesting under a bush. They came back together, and in a stretch where there was limited cover they trotted until they came to a small drainage, where they slowed to a walk. I was totally absorbed as if I were watching a movie, with the images playing in my mind. Why did this one speed up here? Why did that one look over its shoulder there? Up ahead is a large fallen tree. Will they go over, under, or around the trunk?

Completely focused on the tracks on the ground and the stories in my mind, I walked slowly up and over a small rise and practically bumped into the coyotes themselves. I don’t know who was more surprised. In an instant, a jumble of thoughts and emotions tumbled helter-skelter through my mind: What beautiful animals. I’m a super-tracker, I found the coyotes! I’m a complete failure as a tracker, I crashed right into my quarry. I’m sorry that I scared you, my coyote friends. How did I not recognize how fresh the tracks were? Am I actually seeing this for real?

Perhaps because I wasn’t moving very fast, or maybe because my energy was calm, the coyotes didn’t run away in panic. They simply looked at me questioningly for a minute and then turned to head off together like ghosts gliding over the forest floor. The pair of coyotes showed me, even while dealing appropriately with potential danger, how to remain united with the life and land around them. They moved like water, flowing between the trees and over contours in the topography, disappearing within seconds. As I stood looking in the direction they had headed, occasionally one would reappear in an easy trot as it moved over a small hill. Before they vanished for good into the textured land that until then I had thought of as flat and featureless, they cast a final glance back. Now I was present. And these coyotes had become more than just their tracks.

The coyotes taught me a tremendous lesson that day—not just as a tracker but also as a person. I realized that my agenda, in this case that only the tracks were important, had created a filter that left little room for what was actually happening around me. The coyotes gave me wisdom by shattering this filter. My experience with the coyotes allowed me to understand at a visceral level what it could look like to attune to our lives, the beings around us, and the earth. I better understood what is possible if, instead of letting my predetermined agenda be the exclusive filter for life, I let life flow and let myself flow with it.

Try: Go for a walk! This could be around your neighborhood or in a local natural area. When was the last time you went for a walk with no goal in mind except to experience life? Usually we are going somewhere, armed with an agenda: walking the dog, getting exercise, clearing our heads, pondering a problem, looking for birds, etc.

Try going for a walk with the intention to be without a goal or personal agenda. Explore what it feels like to let nature, intuition, the Earth itself set the pace and guide your movements. Let her make the plan. Let her determine the program. What do you notice that you may have never noticed before? Listen to a bird’s song and let its musical trill lift your spirit. Tune into the changing octaves of wind among the leaves and sense yourself, in turn, breathing deeper.

It’s not important where you go, but it is important how you go. Keep coming back to all of your senses and letting your curiosity guide you. Go left if you feel like going left. Pause when you feel like pausing. Move like a tourist in a foreign city, taking in the art and architecture, sights and sounds for the first time. Through your senses, let the reality of your deep connection with the more-than-human world seep in. With a childlike levity, let yourself move freely in body and spirit.