Tracking, and simply stepping into aliveness, is all about curiosity and a willingness to inspect everything. We are always asking, “What happened here, and what is this telling me?” To be truly alive, we must take this further and question everything we know, everything we hear. We must abandon our cultural beliefs and look at what actually makes sense, what actually matters and, most importantly, what is in balance with nature. Only then can we authentically align with an attitude of wild-tending and true caring in our daily lives.
Ask: Does this really work? Is it necessary? Is it benign, is it healthy, does it contribute to the well-being of the world and of others? Does it promote health, freedom, joy? Is it compassionate? Is it kind?
This is a philosophy that guided us in the social revolution of the late ’60s and ’70s, when we recognized that the world was broken and headed down the wrong trail. We confronted environmental destruction, overpopulation, war and domination, growing wealth disparities, racism, sexism, declining education standards, increasing authoritarianism and fear of nonconformity.
As the Vietnam War draft system was closing in on me, I felt that hiding behind a college deferment was a class-biased cop-out. So I learned to not only question authority—the corruption and hypocrisy of our leadership was obvious—but to question everything, from how I dressed to what I did and thought.
I learned that if something didn’t make sense, and especially if it was intertwined with anger and violence, we had to question it, examine it, and—if it still didn’t make sense and was harmful—reject it and develop our own rules that aligned with higher principles.
Henry David Thoreau admonished us to take it all back to the most basic. To see what is really necessary, and what masquerades as necessity but is actually arbitrary. How much of what we do ties us down? Burdens us with unnecessary loads? Sends us down dark paths? Robs us of our freedom?
In tracking, curiosity is the simple, powerful and devastating start. We ask: What is going on here? What is it telling me? When we ask these questions of everything we encounter during a day, it will lead us to a liberation we never knew possible. Simple questions have so much power when asked honestly and innocently. What is that? Why is it there? What does it mean? Can I trust it?
With curiosity and questions, we root out the truth of things. Every time we look behind a rock or a leaf, nature shows us this truth. We can ask: How does that feel? How does it taste? What is the big picture here? What does my intuition tell me? How does my intuition fit with what I see?
This kind of questioning practiced as an ongoing part of living helps us cut past our programming and step into our true selves, walking with a profound right to be here, to live our lives, to contribute to the well-being of the world, to care for it and do what we know is right and let other impulses fade away. Simple curiosity is the doorway to this alternate world—the real world—and all we must do is step through. That choice always floats in front of us, beckoning us to reach out and grasp it.
Richard Vacha is a Point Reyes Station resident and founder of the Point Reyes Tracking School.