Wild Animals Tell Us

Wild Animals Tell Us

by Tom Ward, Little Wolf Gulch, November 28, 2012

Introduction

When we humans find ourselves outside the hedge, away from the barnyard, with neither dog nor drove, wild nature greets us. Small birds come by to take a look. Gatherers, rangers, wood workers, poets and artists, we all have a lot to learn from the less tended edge.

The denizens of the woods come by to observe us. We present edgy opportunities. What might we knock over or pull down? What is all that racket? Or, what smells are those? They seek the sounds and smells and flash of disturbance regimes!

The work we do in Zone V, “the wildlands” is critical to whole landscape integration. Forested ridges provide water brooms and corridors for plant and animal movements. Mixed forest and savannah foothills are traditional human forage lands and most species mosaics (or ecosystem types) co-evolved with human burning, seed dispersal, digging and hunting.

Some of the highest densities of bio-diversity on this planet are associated with humans who work broadscale places. Possibly, the highest bio-diversity ever achieved, the greatest number of species, has been reached recently, before the dominance of agriculture.

If we, an imperfect species like any other, are to re-engage in co-evolution, then the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples is called for. This includes open direct observation, immersion in nature and principled experimentation.

Stories and Myths

Tremendous stress has been put on our thin planet’s skin with the widespread establishment of civilization. Now, this requires a return to tending the remaining forests and grasslands, rivers, seas and marshes. The benefits of carbon sequestration, aquifer recharge, soil biota enhancement and aquatic protection from pollution all imply “more eyes on the land” (from Wes Jackson).

Industrialism first removed landed folks for mobile labor and general extraction. Now with massive urbanization and industrial agriculture much of the landscape has been abandoned and degraded. A new feudalism with small farms and social forestry may be ironically called for to soften the excesses of the ongoing addiction to fossil fuels.

Thus I have become a naturalist, herbologist, bodger, charcoalier, weaver of baskets and all around troublemaker. Who knows when these ways of the woods will become widespread again? Most social and ecological scenarios of persistence and resilience emphasize re-localization: net carbon neutral energy use, living within resource limits, habitually embedded in Nature. This could be a mosaic of complex perennial horticultures interwoven with shifting and shimmering wildness.

To establish the forestry camp in Little Wolf Gulch (LWG) I first looked for a tucked in, but solar, cabin site. The seasonal flows of alkaline springs in the gulch bottom allowed for a small storage tank. Up went a thirty square foot hdpe (high density polyethylene) tarp to feed a rain barrel and under this I placed a small chair. The designer-recliner allowed for prolonged observation and thus began this twelve years of implication: coming into relationship with place.

The local wildlife has been my teacher and boss. I have been careful not to introduce livestock: no Dogs or Cats, no exotic Earthworms. This was Cattle country until fifty years ago when they shut off the Sterling Ditch mining canal above me across the Bear Butte range. Wolf Gulch Farm was derelict until we bought it in 1999.

The Athabascan speaking Dakubetede tribe was removed in the gold rush right after the Hudson Bay Company trapped out the Beavers. This is all within the last 170 years. I can still see the ethnobotanical traces of indigenous horticulture.

Re-introducing careful broadscale under-burning is my guiding desire. This landscape has become explosive with all the recent extraction, the water table drawdowns and the residential development. The opportunity would seem to be Social Forestry, a new/old culture of stewardship.

Since I came to be here the animal population has varied hugely. At first I was inundated with the Riparian Race of the Bushy Tailed Woodrat otherwise known as the Packrat. As I did not yet have much defensible storage space, I trapped the ones who tried to nest in the woodpile or who destroyed my tools.

It seems that by chumming in Foxes who collected the abandoned Packrat carcasses and then established a den, I now have few rodents of any sort and the snakes (perhaps ten or more species) seem less seen as well. But such a conclusion is perhaps hasty. Predator-prey cycles are complex, especially on a large wild landscape like the Little Applegate Valley.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) force-burned five hundred plus acres up LWG five years ago. Rainfall patterns have been erratic (from ten inches in 2001 to forty inches the last two winters). There are multiple other factors yet to be considered. When dealing with multidimensional seral (ecosystem stages) succession it is impossible to write an algorithm that is predictive no matter how many variables are measured.

Thus indigenous management pays attention to the emergent properties of complexity such as certain groups of birds working together in certain seasons. I am lost in the woods when it comes to understanding the totality of what I am experiencing, but I am paying attention and taking notes. I have been keeping a log of work and observations for a decade now at LWG.

The Bear

“Good morning to you, Mister Bear”, I lilted as the black furry lump stirred and jumped up and off from its nap surrounded by torn packaging and crumpled cans. My tent cabin still had a door in its frame but the gulch-side west wall was torn open.

Another time, the steel drum was gone. I found it down gulch about a hundred meters slightly dented but with the lid still on. The first encounter back in ’00 was with a lanky cub who wanted to knock my privy barrel over. I found myself very protective of my own manure! Then there was the dusk return to find my tipi canvas hanging in sheets. The now young adult Bear had gone in one side with a tear of the claw (mice in the woodpile squeaking?), bit the chainsaw gas can which sprayed its face and then burst through the opposite canvas. I pinned up the canvas, cleaned up some and made a fire for dinner.

The Bear came back months later after I had hand sewed several meters of new seams and marked the canvas just south of the east door with a perfect claw prick: “I own this”. I imagine that the Bear is the landlord as it collects tribute. Notice my anthropomorphizing, my projection of human thinking: perhaps fun for story telling but distracting to careful observation!

Black Bears can reach high speeds in just two moves. They have diffuse, motion sensitive, wide-eyed vision. So move or raise your arms while you look sideways. Do not stare (universally impolite) or challenge! Sing a silly tune. If charged (mom with cubs?), stay cool and get ready to roll into a ball. Usually this is a challenge to test you not hunger.

Black Bears have a much more efficient digestion and metabolism than humans. They can climb and run uphill much faster than we can. They also are amazing horticulturalists and we can learn a lot from the shaggy ones.

I learn from the Bear two important principles of behavior in relationships: avoid temptation and know the difference between compassion and sympathy. After all my Quaker non-violent training and peace practice, these two were learned from my mentor the Bear.

Clean Culture: Avoid Temptation

“Clean Culture” is a tactic of horticulture where fallen or compromised fruits are not left to rot. Two buckets are carried in the field: one for quality produce, the other for the processing elements (kitchen, compost or livestock). This way less insect larvae become adults and less unwelcome scavengers are attracted.

When Banty Chickens are let out to forage, they concentrate on bugs slugs and snails. The Banties are brought into cooperation by only tossing forbs and grasses into the deep mulch yard and confining the kitchen and garden scraps to the contained compost. No eggshells are tossed in unless they are well roasted to remove odors and then ground in with the grain scratch to not tempt the Banties to attack their fresh eggs.

If we leave the curtains open in our cabins and go away for a while the Bear will peer in and be tempted by visible food. If we do not wash all the dishes and containers and take away all the non-compostibles and the Bear can smell waste, we are tempting the Bear. Therefore also burn the meat/dairy/fish scraps and rinse and drink the beer dregs. Clean Culture avoids temptation.

Compassion

Compassion is a sort of love: observant and allowing. Sympathy is “identification with”: we lose our center and lean over to lend our help. Good Aikido with wildness is fully relaxed, all senses open and non-committed to action. Everything to do, nothing to get done. Bears and other wildlife do not necessarily appreciate our attempts to help. If we feed them there will be confusing confrontations. Better to plant plenty for all in Zone III and along existing corridors that we are careful never to block. Providing water, such as quail guzzlers and open spring tubs, is useful in Zones III and IV, far enough from our camps to offer discrete privacy and approach.

Wildlife is “other”, our human projection is not useful. Careful and sustained observation with delicate avoidance of perceived similarities is strongly advised. The predator/prey dance and subtle landscape wide fluctuations are mysterious and elaborate. As self-appointed stewards, working and singing through this kaleidoscope, we must practice humility. If we can accumulate landscape knowledge through generations of local culture with songs, stories and art, we may eventually re-build phrase languages of place (such as permie-babble and Chinook-wah-wah). We might learn the appropriate taboos, etiquette and social arrangements that support persistence and resilience.

Animals tell us lots of information we do not understand. Their languages demand our careful attention. Often the presentations are very local; the same owl call at LWG sounds different a couple of mountains to the east. As with prolonged design before building a house, local experience is crucial. Nomadic hunter-gatherers and pastoralists keep songlines that map the traveled and loved landscape. A culture of place teaches where to go to hear the news. The bee tree, the spring, the big White Oak and the mountaintop all proclaim their story via different messengers.

Natural Human Minds

A caretaker on an island in northern British Columbia once told me “No matter how you try you will never think like a Bear”. We can learn to think like a natural Human. Our relationship to Nature is deep and if we manage to have a cared-for infancy followed by a magical childhood in Nature our minds accumulate the metaphors that allow mature thinking. If our culture transitions our adolescence and welcomes our adulthood we learn to live with ambiguity and imperfection, to love change and complexity.

Our mind processes natural observations symbolically. Words are the last stage of translation and serve for communication with other Humans. Almost all of our information exchange with any energetic form is non-verbal and non-conscious or intuitive. So much so that moments in Nature can be palpably magical. How did we know that? Why did that animal come so close? What is it that we seem to be almost getting?

Although all Humans are essentially ancient natural beings who co-evolved with other Earth beings for millions of years only recently (ten thousand years?) have we been separated and alienated from our birthright. We are Pleistocene creatures surrounded by modern Human artifacts and agriculture and we deeply long for the Wild just as the Wild longs for our participation in the great implicate order.

Our songs, our silliness and our sloppiness have long entertained many other species. We belong here, we have the built-in skills to participate and through cultural re-membering we can dance our glorious part in the multi-dimensional spirals while we sing the song lines that keep us oriented.

Concluding Report

When my partner Elizabeth was struggling to take up nutrition and craved protein I was gifted with two young Deer. The first I hit with my truck-artifact (way messier than an obsidian point) and the second was left by the Mountain Lion. I woke one crispy fall day with the intuition to check the spring tub and ignored the call. The next day, more insistently called, I found the broken-neck young buck laid there. I consider fresh road-kill to be a not-to-be-passed-by-gift but no one around here has heard of abandoned Lion kill.

A visiting Grandmother was announced by the Fox. I got the message and walked out to greet her halfway. Later, she gushed how “I have never had a magical animal encounter!” When her visit was done and it was time to go I saw the Fox up on the trail and heard its “Waugh!” bark and so told Gram’ma “Here is your escort.” The Fox led her back to the trailhead with big red saucer eyes periodically in her headlamp when the Fox turned again and again to see if she was following. When things like this happen it is hard not to read intention.

I can go on with amazing animal stories. The point to make is that reciprocation follows familiarity and appreciation. Cooperation is as common in Nature as competition. Via acknowledging that all beings have spirit and after exhibiting respect, Nature gives me feedback that seems incredible to modern rational industry. The juggernaut of extraction cannot afford to hesitate. Humans cannot afford to destroy Nature.

So practically, as I continue to dance my regenerative caretaking, a balance is cobbled together. I am learning how to get along and to smell/listen/see/hear/feel. My ecological footprint is considered and designed for low impact and high opportunity. Lots of observation, a bit of trial, ongoing maintenance and acceptance of small disasters (resilience) are my daily regime.

After the resident animals repeatedly invaded my small spaces for water, I put a spring tub down gulch in the Zone edge III/IV. This is a desert forest and I am the newest and most sedentary camper. After even small messes I left invited more messes, I learned to better clean up after myself.

After my seemingly secure stashes were raided, I found ways to better protect my caches with less evident temptations and invitations. The steel drum food cache with the locking lid became fixed in place with chains and wrapped in barbed wire then dusted with the highest B.T.U. rated Cayenne Pepper on lid and base. All packages of food are well sealed and nothing is left smelly.

As my composting systems have become more colonized with local micro-life they have become less attractive to larger animals. The composting privy has Coprinus mushrooms, native Dung Beetles, Soldier Flies and has not brought in the Bear again. I did share the squatting platform with a Hairy Woodpecker one morning this fall as it hunted Spiders.

Relations with the Pocket Gopher have pushed me faster towards woody perennials. Their appetite and tunneling are prodigious. This adobe mountain slope is thoroughly burrowed and a long list of species uses the well established infrastructure. The farm over the ridge laughs at my garden attempts and gently invites me to just come on over.

I now garden in one inch mesh galvanized poultry netting (mildly toxic to plants as the zinc releases). That basket is propped up against a big log, stone wall, stacked boards or chopped out terrace. Lined with several layers of cardboard and perhaps a moisture barrier then filled with compost it will grow vegetables and herbs while young trees get established. Then the basket rots and the Pocket Gopher busts back in.

I compost in a partially buried HDPE recycled trash can that leaks but does not dry out and that mole or gopher tunnel not. I am considering going to all container gardening but irrigation becomes complicated.

My low-energy-use ethic means non-powered passive cooling. The pit in the gulch bottom stays near fifty degrees F. and with its cold air trapping shed roof any odors that might tempt seem to stay down. I do have to check for Snakes. The up-slope cabin uses a seasonal screen box window and an insulated cooler that trades out propylene glycol “blue ice” containers overnight. The food stays indoors during the summer and only the recharge bricks go out. This again is discretion rather than temptation.

I am glad that there are seldom any motor noises as such rackets mess up the local Nature orchestra. I only use a chainsaw in winter (see my article “Social Forestry” in PCA #74). Spring and summer use would interrupt the nesting season and fall is too dangerously dry. One more reason to practice hand tools: pay wider attention and avoid noise pollution.

One day this fall as I started to handsaw on my porch there was a racket down gulch. The Bear had been taking a bath in the spring tub and I disturbed its absolutions. The rapid exit brought down a dry snag (dead tree) and splashed a lot of water out of the tub.

Relations with Nature are messy. My intentions are not to establish a “Peaceable Kingdom”. Wolf Gulch Farm needs fuel hazard reduction to avoid catastrophic fire. My work in the woods is a series of compromises without enough negotiation. There is no judge or jury other than what generations of experience might offer. I can only hope that I am learning useful-to-all ways of being.