Some urban raccoons can untie knots and open doors. Fisher cats aren’t felines and don’t eat fish. A bobcat’s teeth have evolved to fit precisely into the spaces of its prey’s spinal cord. Spotted skunks warn away predators by doing a handstand on their front feet and spreading their back legs in the air. As Sharman Apt Russell’s excellent new book shows us, the animal kingdom is a riot and a hoot.
Like so many of the creatures that the author references, What Walks This Way is a hybrid: part memoir, part field guide, part natural history. The tone is that of a generous mentor talking you through a topic—wildlife tracking—that she clearly adores. Potted histories of coyotes, bears, raccoons, etc., are intermingled with anecdotes about the author’s time wandering the wilderness in southern New Mexico with a beloved friend, or stories of legendary trackers, her rugged great-uncle among them, or evenings spent on the porch listening for mysterious rustlings that might lead to discoveries.
While Russell possesses the curiosity of a serious scientist, endearingly there remains something of the enthusiastic amateur about her. She writes, “You . . . have to care, really care, about what animal was here a day ago . . . The truth is that sometimes I care, and sometimes I don’t” (p. 85). Elsewhere she states that professional trackers carry rulers to measure pawmarks; she usually forgets hers and measures everything with her fingers. (She assures us that the distance from fingertip to first crease is about an inch.)
The book is full of enjoyable digressions. Besides brief introductions to biologists and ecologists doing vital conservation work, Russell offers copious examples of nature’s whims and absurdities. The gray fox can scramble sixty feet up a cottonwood tree and leap from branch to branch; the red fox can’t climb trees at all. Coyotes and badgers often hunt together, sometimes with the same partner throughout the season. Researchers in Chicago have seen coyotes wait at stoplights until a road is clear, wander into the middle, then pause to check for traffic going the other way. Javelinas mourn their dead.
In some ways, the digressions are the point. The author quotes the ecologist Mark Elbroch: “The competent tracker is both scientist and storyteller.” Russell, a novelist as well as a nature writer, concurs. She mentions that imagination is key to tracking because imagination allows us to interpret the signs discovered. Why was this mountain lion bounding so quickly up this particular slope? Why did this herd of deer change direction and veer towards the trees? Trackers use everything they know about an animal and weave it, along with the signs that the animal has left behind, into a story.
Stories can be wonderful, but of course the budding tracker needs a few basics. In What Walks This Way, practical information comes in panels with a shaded background. These panels consist of brief explanations of how to identify a particular animal’s tracks, as well as handy (paws-y?) diagrams of these tracks. Kim Cabrera’s illustrations are a model of clarity and elegance. Cabrera also offers possibly the best advice imaginable for trackers: “You teach yourself by spending time in the dirt” (p. 121).
While the book is joyful, it does touch upon serious ecological issues. Each chapter details the degree to which the animals described are endangered. More often than not, human intervention, a.k.a. greed, is the cause. Climate change looms large. There is also a section that describes how and why we hunt. (Hint: it’s not always for food or self-preservation.)
What Walks This Way will send you back to the wild places. If you live in a rural area or go hiking, you’ll find yourself eyeing the ground as you walk, hoping for the telltale sign—a triangular palm pad, the X shape of a dog’s hind track, a dewclaw toe—of some gorgeous critter who passed this way. And all the while, you’ll have Russell’s friendly voice in your head imploring you to pay attention, to notice the things worth noticing: in this case, the creatures with whom we share this sacred planet.
