It is so old-fashioned where I am boondocked right now. There are few brown signs and no special categories of land "management." There are few visitors. The scenery is average. Places like this are my sanctuaries from the Future. My loyalty is to the Dying Past of the Old West.
But what has that to do with today's issue: animal tracks on dry dust? The mountain biking club and I were off exploring Woodchute Mountain. We came upon a water entrapment pond when I noticed a plurality of animal tracks on the talcum powder-like dust.
These ponds are a big deal in the tawny chaparral of Arizona's Central Highlands. They are like the community wells in a traditional third world village. These ungulate gals came down to gossip while partaking of Life's most precious commodity. It was hard to photograph them while Coffee Girl lunged at them with all her puppyishness.
Consider these tracks. They were over three inches across. I looked up animal tracks on the internet and they don't look like coyotes!
Then there's the five-toed ones, with the claw-marks. According to the books, this is a black bear's impression. Notice the heavy palm--black bears walk flat footed rather than on their toes.
This inability that we moderns have of reading tracks--it is a form of blindness that makes exploring the land less interesting. It's like one of the basic senses being missing. We are sense-deprived already compared to most animals because our sense of smell is so weak.
Imagine sitting out on a chilly night, a quarter mile downwind of this watering hole. There are no sounds except for occasional coyote screams. There is no light except from the Milky Way or maybe a moon. You wait patiently while aiming an infared scope at the pond. Who would come down from the mountains for a drink?
