Jon Young emphasizes the idea of a “sit spot” in a tracker’s education: a spot where you go, daily if possible, to spend time observing. You see how things change according to time of day and time of year; you learn to sit still and observe the world closely; you become intimately familiar with one spot and begin to understand the different relationships and encounters that go on there. I could go on forever—in fact, Jon has often said that your sit spot will become your best tracking teacher, and that nothing will teach you more about the more-than-human world.

I have not kept this practice. I bought the first part of the Kamana program over a year ago, but I keep putting off when I’ll really start with it. I keep finding excuses about why right now seems like a bad time to start, and I always have something else that needs my attention. I have, however, taken regular walks along the Montour Trail.

The Montour Trail follows the path of an old railroad, now converted into a walking and biking trail. I walk the same two miles, several times a week. It makes for excellent exercise, of course; the human body excels at no physical activity as much as walking, especially normal human walking, or what Tom Brown and Jon Young call “fox walking,” to distinguish it from the aberrant, destructive practice that so many of us have accepted as “normal” walking. Along the way, I’ve noticed that I’ve begun to experience some of the benefits of a “sit spot.” I’ve seen the plants change through the seasons. I’ve seen the relationships of bird communities and plant communities.

For instance, the hill I live on drains into a creek, and that creek flows into the Montour Run at a point where a road crosses over it on an old bridge, and the trail crosses the road. In the brush near the bridge lives a groundhog. When I read about the ways that native people would learn the names of other-than-human persons from those persons themselves, it meant one thing. But when this groundhog came to know us, to recognize us, and ultimately, honored us by not only appearing to us, but by revealing his distinguishing characteristics—by teaching us his name—it meant quite something else.

We’ve become well-acquainted, too, with a family of rabbits that lives near the trail. We’ve watched their young mature since the spring, growing bigger and more mature with the season. More than once, we’ve spotted deer tracks; we’ve heard the underbrush rustle with a large creature moving suddenly, and most recently, Giuli caught a fleeting glimpse of brown and white bounding away as we approached. Last weekend, we followed the tracks along; I could tell where she stopped and poked her head through the fence, looking at the Montour Run flowing below. We followed her over the bridge, to the point where she curved back sharply around that fence, down the densely covered, steep hillside, towards the creek.

This still misses some of the important things a sit spot, specifically, can teach—things like stillness, for instance. But I’ve also experienced how the more-than-human world draws in the senses, seduces the eyes, calms the ears, entices the nose, and lures you into its sensuous beauty. I’ve learned to recognize the songs and calls of birds. I’ve watched soap opera dramas play out in the skies, and read the gossip columns written in the dirt. I’ve felt a profound experience from this. And like Jon Young said, this two-mile stretch of wooded trail has taught me profound things about perception, about sound and language and song, about beauty and humanity, about our more-than-human world, and our place in it.