The Tracker School Experience

TRACKER Books:

While in Hawaii, we felt the call of the wild. We missed the fresh water rivers and lakes, the deer, bear, raccoons, snakes and the like. Paul and I have a mutual love for the wild. We read Tom Brown Jr.’s books, The Tracker, The Vision, The Quest, Grandfather, and many other together. We fantasized about being able to support ourselves and maybe even thrive in a totally natural setting. We signed up for classes with the Tracker School to build these skills learning from The Tracker himself.

We made it to California in early April for our first class. The classes are held in CA outside of Boulder Creek. What a beautiful setting. We made a summer style debris hut that allowed the sunlight to filter in and us to lay upon our back and gaze into the heart of the redwoods.

We spent three week there outside of Boulder Creek. I volunteered for the three classes while Paul participated as a new student. I had taken the classes years earlier. The classes were “The Standard”, “Philosophy 1″ and “Philosophy II”. The staff of the Tracker School takes the Standard class very seriously as they know if may be the only time they have to touch a student’s life. As a volunteer I got to be part of the behind the scenes operations and really enjoyed the level of spirit that the instructors put into their presentations on different subjects. Paul was taken through the process of making shelter, making fire, purifying water, and gathering food. He loved the skills and cherishes them as sacred. He struggled with the school’s ‘modern” approach to such an ancient and sacred skill set.pe Overall, we did feel sad to experience the commercialization of the sacred skills of the Apache elder Stalking Wolf.

The Philosophy classes are about learning to live with the Earth rather than “on” the Earth. The students spend a lot of time learning a meditation approach that Tom believes allows them to connect with the spiritual realm of the self and the world. Paul had some amazing and outstanding results with the courses. One exercise that the group does with a partner is to have one partner close his eyes while the other goes away, finds something in nature to gaze upon and sends the image of it to his partner back in the lecture hall. Paul found a 5 petaled purple flower and sent that image to his partner. His partner came and reported exactly that image. aul and I have played with this since that time and found that we can send images back and forth when we focus on it. What a gift!!!

As a volunteer, these classes were not as exciting. There was not as much to contribute to the group and the instructors were not as involved as they had been in the Standard Class.

The primary gift that we take with us from these two classes is the importance of developing our internal imaging ability. We have become so dependent on our technological gadgets that we have allowed our ability to image to atrophy. It is an important skill that allows access to others senses we have also allowed to atrophy.