The Tom Brown School
(Page 5 of 8)
"Every mark is a track," Brown teaches. "Everything that is
not flat is a track; the Grand Canyon is a water track, a
fallen tree is a track of the heartrot that killed it and
of the wind that felled it. Every dent, pocket, fissure,
scrape, mark in the ground, every rolling hill, every
scratch is a track. The ground is a manuscript, an open
book; it is littered with tracks, from the largest to the
smallest, and each one tells you something."
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To me, the lectures are a revelation. Brown's teaching goes
way beyond merely identifying foot or paw prints in the
dirt. "Earth mother gives you a clear print to follow maybe
5% of the time," he says. He teaches us compression
tracking—identifying vague depressions in the ground
or deep leaf litter or thin dust by their general shape and
the patterns in which they're arranged.
Then he moves to an even more subtle art, the reading of
what Brown calls pressure releases, the characteristic ways
the earth compresses, cracks, crumbles, moves, responds to
a foot or paw. There are hundreds of them, and each means
something different. There is a single release that
indicates an increase in speed from slow jog to jog,
another for a slight turn of the head to the right, another
for a momentary hesitation (perhaps the person or animal
considered changing direction for an instant, then decided
otherwise). Pressure releases tell all.
"From one footprint," says Brown, "I can tell a person's
height and weight, gender, emotional state, condition of
health and degree of strength. I can tell whether they're
right- or left-handed, whether their stomach is full or
empty, whether they have to go to the bathroom. I can even
tell a few days before a person gets a cold, because
there's a r estriction in breathing."
The lecture lasts well into the evening. Brown's energy
never abates. He draws dozens of release patterns on the
blackboard. He steps into a tracking box—sort of a
pro quality sandbox—and demonstrates how even subtle
body movements are revealed in prints. He is unrelenting.
He sketches more releases. He tells us of releases within
releases, of microreleases. We learn that all of the
releases we've discussed can be created not only by a foot
or paw, but by individual toes, by each lobe of an animal's
heel pad.
It's simply too much for a mortal to absorb. By the time we
file out, I've filled my third notebook and I'm brain dead,
the victim of a tracking fanatic. I take advantage of a
rare lull in activities and tumble into my sleeping bag.
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