Eloquent imprints tell tale of the trail
The hind track of a coyote on Vista Grande Trail at Los Vaqueros Watershed.
You’d think we trail mavens would hate the rain. Oh sure, we can figure out how to keep our skin dry. But all the waterproof apparel in the world won’t prevent mud from fouling our high-tech hiking boots. Scraping hardened goop from the Byzantine cleat pattern of my Altras, I assure you, is no walk in the park.
The other school of thought maintains that goop is good. Let it rain; let it pour. Wait a few days for the trails to dry out and take a look. You’ll find, right under your Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass, an array of wonders those pristine trails of summer can’t provide: animal track.
If wildflower enthusiasts love spring, trackers love winter. Mud and snow are the parchment on which animals write the signature of their presence. As a human signature can reveal the signer’s personality, an animal’s track can divulge what the beast was doing when it made its mark, allowing us to deduce, like Holmes, the creature’s species, gender, direction, speed and activity. It’s remarkable how much information can be contained in an impression a few inches square.
The track of a black-tailed deer on Hetherington Loop Trail at Mt. Diablo. The pointed ends, like arrows, reveal the direction of travel.
Sometimes the impression is dramatic. Many winters ago on Oak Savannah Trail at Los Vaqueros I spotted a mystifying deer track. Four close-spaced hoof prints had been embossed in the dead center of that 12-foot-wide avenue perpendicular to the line of the trail. I looked around for other deer sign and found none.
What I found, however, was sign of a pair of coyotes heading in the same direction. The freshness of their track implied they could have crossed the trail in the time frame of the deer crossing. And the spacing of their track suggested they were making serious time.
Then the vision came: A deer in flight, sailing in from my right, landing smack on the center of the trail and bounding majestically away to my left, disappearing into the tule fog of a bracing December dawn; the coyotes in urgent pursuit: one head down, led by the scent of prey; the other head up, ears forward and pupils dilated.
The track of a bobcat on the prowl on Miners Trail at Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. Why no claw marks? Cats’ claws are retractable.
At dawn on a snow-capped Mt. Diablo many winters ago I came on a set of track that conjured another tale of fight or flight. Puncturing the snow on Meridian Ridge were two sets of coyote track alongside the track of a single deer, all created after the snowfall had ended. No more than six hours old.
I’d caught a glimpse of the terrible balance of the world: death and an uncertain rebirth. Did the coyotes catch the deer? Was the deer a doe or a buck? The answer carried consequences for both species.
A few hundred yards up, at the 2,200-foot level, something had happened. The deer, possibly sensing danger, had taken a sharp left up into dense manzanita. One coyote had peeled off and followed. The other had kept to the road trail. Were the predators working, as coyotes do, as a team? I never found out. What I found was the signature of mortality, and a reminder of my privileged place in the conscious awareness of the world.
Dust off your magnifying glass, Sherlock. It’s time for the trails to get muddy. Time for the beasts to sign in.