Kleenexes accidentally dropped on the floor have long been an easy target…he loves to take them before I can get to them and go prancing off to a safe corner to devour them….the more used, the better! Yes, he eats them! Last spring, when Evening Primroses were in abundance here, I saw him repeatedly fooled by the track in his brain that had him think they were Kleenexes or toilet paper and then seem disappointed that there were only sweet smelling delicate white flowers that bloom close to the earth.
We are trackers by heart….how many of us have seen something and then noticed that we see it’s shape again and again…or think we do. Yesterday while Ubuntu and I were out walking near Prescott, AZ with my dear friend Delisa and her dog Jaxon, we came upon a gorgeous snake in the creek…probably 4 feet long with an elegant profusion of brown and white chevrons on it’s back. I quickly looked for rattles and a diamond head and seeing that was not who it was, I felt safe to stand and watch it’s grace and sensuous ways. As we moved on from there…again and again, every stick and branch became snake! We are hard wired to see patterns….why? I have used this to my advantage in other ways, besides safety in the past too…when looking for something lost on the ground, I look at something else that might look similar on the earth, and magically, my eyes are more attuned to see the lost item. It works.
As we walked today in the light Spring rain, Ubuntu again found white. Down the wash way near a hovering Pinyon tree, were the white bones of probably that same deer…a vacant rib cage still bearing the threads of it’s sinews and flesh, a part of the vertebrae and more. Then again…a larger piece of the hide with mostly it’s white underside and that white underfur from it’s belly. Tracking white we are led.
Tracking and pattern-stalking is absolutely relevant to leading a soul-filled life…we must use all our senses and all our experiences to uncover the threads that carry our story…the resonances of our particular soul thread. Signs and symbols come again and again in the visible world, in our imagination, in dreams, in emotions, in the way we are drawn to things we don’t understand…always there is something invisible moving in our worlds and our task is to see it through some kind of soulful vision that understands even invisible patterns. Not unlike the stealthy big cats that move in the fringes of the human worlds and was likely the predator of the deer we found….they are rarely seen, but their presence is. They are solitary creatures…shy, with an incredible range….Soul-similar.
I am finding myself very lucky to have this time to saturate myself in a kind of life of tracking. I don’t have too much to distract me, so I can pay attention. In the busy lives that most humans live, we rarely have the time and energy to become great intuitive trackers….
Our ability and choice to be present to what is here…to gain insight from saying yes to whatever our nose can sniff out through the twists and turns of our lives…is a part of our movement towards leading a conscious life.