
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 10, 1994                   TAG: 9401100245
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Monty S. Leitch
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAKING TRACKS

The other evening, while more or less snowbound, we watched a modern-day Western with a twist: the savvy Indian tracker who showed up to help the posse was a woman.

This was the movie's one interesting characteristic, and even it didn't pan out. After the beautiful tracker had leapt from her horse to examine a set of tracks in the mud, she swung her silky braids back over one shoulder and said, ``Hmmmm. He go thata way. Two wolves follow, one male.''

The rest of the posse nodded, answered back sagely, ``Hmmmm,'' and turned their horses in the direction she'd indicated.

Right up until the very end, this savvy (if stereotyped) tracker appeared in control of the situation. But then, at the point of crisis, when the villain jumped out from behind a rock, she suddenly required her previously inept (but handsome) city-slicker side-kick to save her pretty blue-jeaned fanny.

So much for that interesting twist.

I've always been intrigued by the notion of tracking: the ability to follow another creature, to know another creature from clues he's not even aware of leaving, the ability to be, in a sense, in that other creature's head simply because you know how to walk in his footsteps.

I have a book entitled ``A Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior.'' Sometimes I braid my hair and go out looking for signs. It's just another one of the things I do to fool myself into thinking that I know what goes on around here when I'm not keeping watch.

Lately, clues have been easy. The snow in the woods and around the shed that houses my office is positively decorated with tracks.

So far, I've been able to identify birds, rabbits, squirrels, cats, dogs, shrews, mice and deer. No big surprises. I've seen all these critters before, even without the evidence of tracks. I already knew they lived here.

Now, they're all enjoying the largesse of my birdfeeder. Including the deer, who knock over the big feeder of sunflower seeds practically every night.

Along with these critters, a 'possum sometimes noses around late in the afternoons. I think one set of tracks that matched no picture in my book must have been 'possum tracks: staggered footprints intertwined with the drag of a lazily carried tail.

In the woods, I've seen the same. Plus one surprise (that shouldn't have surprised me): a set of human tracks belonging to some trespasser who wears a much wider boot than mine, but who walks with a gait of almost the same length.

I guess all this means that what goes on around here when I'm not keeping watch is pretty much the same as what goes on when I am.

Somehow, I find this hard to accept. Because either it means that the secret lives of squirrels and mice are no more interesting than what I can see on my own (I'd prefer the drama depicted in nature shows), or it means that I'm still not seeing what's plainly in front of my face.

Here's the paradox: I want life to be full of mystery and drama, revealed only through signs and clues, but I want to understand completely, too, and thus control. That trespasser has cut a neat round hole in the wire fence boundary. I could string wire across the hole again, but it wouldn't do any good.

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.

by CNB