Make Tracks

To Track an Animal Is to Track Yourself

By now, I'm beginning to wonder: Who is this guy? How did he become a tracker? That answer turns out to be somewhat complicated. Rezendes is one of those rare people who, over the course of his lifetime, has managed to reinvent himself radically -- several times over. Tracking, he says, has been a potent tool for learning about himself. Over dinner, he tells me his story.

He first learned about the forest from his mother, who took him into the woods near their home in southeastern Massachusetts to teach him the names of plants and to show him which plants were edible. "She instilled in me a real affinity for nature," he says. But as he grew older, his life took a decidedly reckless turn: He joined and then led the Fall River, Massachusetts chapter of the Devil's Disciples, a notorious motorcycle gang.

Rezendes was the alpha biker in the gang: His standard uniform included a black-leather jacket, a kidney belt that bristled with 500 steel studs, and dark glasses that he wore even at night. He became a skilled street fighter and a daredevil biker. He'd often scream down the highway at breakneck speeds, standing upright on the pegs of his Harley -- with his arms outstretched and his first wife sitting on his shoulders. He'd take on all comers in eighth-of-a-mile drag races, and wipe out every car. He was fearless, and yet he lived in fear.

"I was tough because I was afraid not to be tough," he says. "I was living in a predator's world, and I was too scared not to be a predator myself."

His biker life ended in one night, when Massachusetts State Police stormed his apartment and arrested him for illegal possession of a .357 Magnum and three shopping bags filled with marijuana. He was sentenced to 5 to 10 years in Walpole State Prison -- but the judge suspended his sentence in lieu of probation, and he never served any time.

The bust was a wake-up call. "It forced me to ask myself some tough questions -- questions about the nature of machismo and about fear, about being a predator and about being the prey," Rezendes recalls. "I realized that there had to be more to life than that. I needed to know, 'What's the truth? What's the scoop?' "

So he threw himself into hatha yoga and became a yoga teacher. He studied intensely the teachings of the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti and eventually started and led an ashram in southeastern Massachusetts. He wanted a nonviolent life, and he went to dietary extremes to achieve it: Vegetarianism wasn't pure enough; he verged on fruitarianism, living only on raw fruits and grains.

But the ashram proved to be a dead end. "One day it hit me that I really hadn't changed," he says. "Before, I was pursuing self-gratification by becoming a macho biker. And then I realized that I was still seeking the same self-gratification, only this time I was trying to create an image of myself as a spiritual person."

The ashram broke up, and Rezendes took a job as a long-haul trucker -- one week on the road, one week off. He spent much of his free time in the woods, which he still considered his sanctuary. He pursued tracking, and began taking his camera into the forest. Without any intention on his part, he created one of the most extensive collections of film on tracks and signs available anywhere.

Tracking was also a way for Rezendes to explore the questions of self-knowledge that had haunted him since his biker days. Ultimately, he says, we must answer such questions for ourselves. But through his classes, he hopes to show people that tracking is a good way to begin the search.

"Tracking opens a door to the web of life," he says. "It shows how all living things -- people, the forest, and the animals within the forest -- are interconnected. If you track an animal for a long enough time, you'll find that its trail is your trail; its fate is your fate. In a sense, we are tracking ourselves."

Put in Your Dirt Time

Day two: Class commences on a wooded road deep in the Cold River watershed. Today, we will bushwhack into some of the wildest country in Massachusetts: rugged, ridge-backed forest that's unbroken by roads or even trails. Bear country. We will spend the day reading signs left by bears, and learning about their behavior.

Rezendes takes a compass reading, and we file into the forest. Just like yesterday, we soon find a sign. A bear has attacked a young striped maple, biting it in several places and leaving it broken and mangled. Rezendes calls this a "whammy tree": A bear climbs into the tree and bites at it, breaking it off at the top and trashing its lower branches.

Pushing north, we head up a steep ridge into mixed woods of beech, maple, and hemlock. Rezendes ambles along, hands in pockets, his deep-brown eyes scanning the trees and the forest floor. He really does appear to be reading the forest, and he quickly puts us onto more signs. Taking his lead, other people in the group scout out signs: an overturned stump where a bear has dug for insect larvae and grubs; clawed-up beech trees that bears have climbed for food; and more whammy trees.