Walking With Coyote

I was greeted at the trailhead by large canine footprints. For a moment, I wondered which neighbor had been there with a very big dog, but then I realized that the only human prints were from my snowshoes two days earlier. I was following in the footsteps of a coyote.

This is not unusual - in the woods where I walk, coyote tracks abound, and they often follow the same trails the humans do. Deer prints are scattered and more likely to cross the trail than to travel along it. The coyotes do not meander, but walk steadily forward, telegraphing some clear purpose.

In Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez says, “When the Nunamiut hunter goes out, he leaves his personal problems behind [and]…slips…into a state of concentrated, relentless attention to details… It is the custom of most biologists, on the other hand, not only to bring their mental preoccupations into the field but to talk about them while they are walking along” (82). Some days I am more like one, some more like the other, but I generally do not go into the woods to examine my troubles; it’s a time when I can allow the details and demands of life to slip away, and I can concentrate on the simple fact of walking forward. I’m not gathering food or information, but rather, putting burdens down.

There’s something about the white and cold of winter that scours my mental landscape. The reality of being in the snowy woods alone, following in fresh coyote tracks, brings heightened awareness. A snowshoe trek is the epitome of the one-foot-after-another discipline I love about hiking, and even though I wasn’t trying to meditate, the effect was the same as repeating a mantra over and over again; my mind felt calm and awake, washed clean.