The Tom Brown School
An in-depth look at this New Jersey-based wilderness survival school.
The Wilderness Skills Schools, Part III
RELATED CONTENT
A short course in tracking, nature
and wilderness survival
By Terry Krautwurst
Photographed by William Waldron
I'm standing at the upper edge of an overgrown hillside, a
few sloping acres of knee-high grasses and brush in rural
western New Jersey. Above, half a dozen raucous crows play
in a blue sky—the definitive blue sky, cloudless,
crystal clear. Along the lower edge of the field huge oaks
and willows rise above lesser foliage, their boughs arcing
over a wide river, dappling the water in leafy shadow.
A typical countryside scene—unless you include the 40
or so human posteriors and pairs of legs grazing in groups
scattered across the field. The bodies to which they're
connected are thrust out of sight into bushes and briars
and grasses, heads hidden like—well, no, not a bit
like ostrich heads hidden in the sand. Hardly evading the
world, these people are deep in discovering it.
This is the next-to-last day of a six-day Standard
(introductory) course at the Tom Brown School of Tracking,
Nature and Wilderness Survival.
An excited voice emerges from somewhere in a clump of
sedge. "Tom! I found something! I think it's a weasel
hair!" A hand pops up, then a head. "Wow, look at this!"
another voice, belonging to a bluejeaned backside, shouts.
"Hey, I think I found a sleeping chamber!" someone else
hollers. "Look at all these trails!" an awed voice
exclaims, its legs snaking deeper into the vegetation.
The excitement of discovery is contagious, and, dropping to
my knees, I gladly shed my role as observer/journalist,
part a layer of matted grass, poke my head downward and
join my fellow students in a heretofore unseen world. "I'll
be damned," I whisper to myself as I immediately uncover a
tiny, wellworn path—too small for rabbits, probably a
vole run—winding around a sapling and meandering
downhill. "Would you look at that."
Belly down, nose inches from the ground, I study the
two-inch-wide trail, a Lilliputian highway paved with grass
pummeled smooth by countless wee footsteps. The closer I
look, the more I am drawn into life in this grass forest,
and the more I see: some droppings here, a hair there, some
tiny scratch marks, a rounded, nestlike chamber. Carefully
replacing the thatch above one section before parting the
vegetation over the next—as our instructors have
repeatedly reminded us to do—I trace the tunnel
downhill. Every few feet it intersects other paths, some
hidden, some exposed, some larger, some smaller—roads
traveled by mice, deer, foxes, ground hogs, raccoons.
Together, I realize, they form an amazing network, a sort
of macrovascular system pulsing with animal movement, that
must cover the entire field, and—good Lord, think of
it—all the fields adjoining this one, and all those
adjoining them.
Page: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
Next >>
