Make Tracks

Even from 20 feet away, you can clearly see the claw marks. The beech tree's smooth, silvery bark is scarred with hundreds of weathered lacerations, left by black bears that scrambled high into the upper canopy for food.

Thirteen tracking students gather around the pockmarked tree. Their instructor, Paul Rezendes, pulls out a tape measure from his day pack and locates a fresh set of marks. "This is a feeding tree -- bears have been hitting this beech for many, many years," he says as he measures the marks. "Four and three-quarter inches -- that's a good-size bear.

"But it's not enough just to put a number and a label on these things," he continues. "The bark of this beech records the passing of generations of bears, far into the past. Immerse yourself in the details of these claw marks, and you'll start to understand the life of a bear."

A magnificently skilled animal tracker, Rezendes, 56, is an internationally published nature photographer and the author of three books -- Tracking & The Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign; Wetlands: The Web of Life (coauthored with his wife, Paulette Roy); and The Wild Within: Adventures in Nature and Animal Teachings -- all of which are packed with his hard-earned knowledge of the wilderness. From his home base, in Athol, Massachusetts, he's been taking people into the woods and showing them how to read animal tracks for more than a decade.

Rezendes is not the only tracker turned teacher: Tom Brown Jr., of Asbury, New Jersey, pioneered the modern art of teaching tracking, and continues to lead classes through the vast pine and cedar forests of New Jersey's Pine Barrens. John Stokes, who heads the Tracking Project in Corrales, New Mexico, teaches tracking and survival skills to people from all walks of life, from American Indian schoolchildren to businesspeople. Big-time organizations, such as the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Nature Conservancy, offer workshops on tracking. Click on the Wilderness School's home page (www.geosmith.com/wilderness/schools.html), and you'll find a list of tracking clubs in 25 states.

Little noticed and even less understood, animal tracking is catching on among hikers, backpackers, and others who value the outdoors. Rezendes believes that his students, many of whom live in cities, take his workshops because making and maintaining a connection to the natural world is essential to their lives.

"There is no better way to connect with nature and the wild," says Rezendes, "than learning how to track."

This past summer, I followed Rezendes as he led a workshop in advanced tracking. His classroom consisted of trail-less hardwood and hemlock forests in northern Massachusetts. His technique was to conduct a kind of roving tutorial. In two short days, we found tracks and signs made by bear, moose, deer, fisher cat, beaver, otter, porcupine, raccoon, mink, red squirrel, chipmunk, owl, and even hawk. By studying their claw marks and their scent posts, their tracks and yes, their scat (a tracker's term for animal droppings), we began to see into the world of these animals -- and to understand their ways. And we even learned a surprising lesson: Tracking an animal's life may be a very good way to see into our own lives.

"Tracking an animal is an educational process, like learning how to read," says Rezendes. "In fact, it is learning to read." Here, then, is a master tracker's primer on the language of the forest.

First, Learn to See

Day one: The class meets up at Rezendes's backwoods home, which sits on a bluff overlooking a rapid-choked waterway called Millers River. Surrounded by heavily forested, state-owned land, Rezendes's camp is the only man-made structure on this six-mile stretch of riverbank.

The group of students is diverse: Fede Carandini, 33, a product developer for ECCO Design Inc., drove up from New York City; Wendi Weinberg, 44, from nearby Pelham, is a therapist specializing in the Jin Shin Do form of acupressure; Jonathan Sargent, 40, a motorcycle mechanic, traveled from Wilton, New Hampshire. Though the group of students ranges in age from their mid-twenties to their mid-fifties, we have one thing in common: We know that Rezendes is a trailblazer in the world of tracking, and we are restless to follow his path.

Rezendes introduces himself. He looks every bit the woodsman: camouflage cap, graying beard, green safari shirt, and jeans tucked into Dunham hiking boots. His clothes smell faintly of earth and campfire. He tells us that we will be spending all of the next two days in the woods. But first he intends to disabuse us of a few stereotypes about tracking.

Unlike Davey Crockett in those old TV shows, we won't "track down" some big-game animal deep in the woods. With 13 of us tramping through the forest, we're unlikely to see anything larger than a chipmunk. Besides, Rezendes isn't interested in simply finding a set of tracks and following them to the animal that made them.