Tamarack Song has spent his life studying the world's aboriginal people, apprenticing to Elders, and learning traditional hunter-gatherer survival skills. He has lived alone in the woods for years and even resided with a pack of Wolves. In 1987, he founded the Teaching Drum Outdoor School in the wilderness of northern Wisconsin, where he runs the yearlong Wilderness Guide Program.
Given the widespread hatred of Wolves in the United States, we were immediately gratified to see that Song has capitalized Wolf (along with other animals and plants) out of his respect for his relationship with these beings. The art of tracking in the wilderness means becoming one with an animal and feeling what he or she feels.
In a series of appealing chapters, Song reflects upon his tracking of a variety of animals including a Fox, a Deer, a Frog, a Coyote, a Bear, and a Cougar. During this process the body's senses come alive, the imagination and memory help by reading signs and stories of the forest floor, the tracker feels connected with centuries of movement in the stillness of an old forest, ending with the challenges of finding invisible trails in sky and water.
We are impressed with Tamarack Song's spiritual literacy and the multiple ways he can read the worlds of nature, animals and things.
