I'd like to thank my wife, Ciel, and our new baby girl, Stella, for supporting my passion for wildlife and tracking.
Jonah Evans
INTRODUCTION
Mark Elbroch
It's not for everyone, this world of little scats and tiny tracks. But for those who are bold, I'd say get some gloves and a jacket and a hat and go out and explore California.
GARY SNYDER IN “THE POROUS WORLD,” A PLACE IN SPACE, 1995
I arrived at Nettle Springs in the afternoon, a perennial water flow many miles up a dry desert canyon, surrounded by steep, unforgiving slopes of pinyon pine, oak, and juniper. I parked in some shade, filled a water bottle, and strolled up the dry, sandy wash above the springs, where tracks were easy to see. I was looking for an animal to follow. A few deer had crossed the wash early in the morning, but I was hoping for a soft-footed animal, which provided a greater challenge.
Suddenly fresh Cougar tracks were beneath me. The tracks belonged to a mature female cat, and she crossed the wash and traveled northeast into the manzanita, pines, and juniper. After a deep breath to focus and quiet my mind, I began to pursue. The afternoon was fast slipping away, so time was short, and I followed as quickly as my skills allowed. Yet within an hour of starting on the trail, I found myself confused. I looked down at the fresh tracks of a male Cougar—had she really been a he? No, for just around the corner I found her trail again; there were two cats, one following the other. But I was wrong again, for I then noticed the trails of at least three different Cougars converging among the dense manzanita bushes and winding up and over the folds of the desert canyon. I paused to reassess, kneeling down and feeling the large pad of a Cougar's track—that which shows more clearly in difficult tracking terrain.
The mess of tracks could have been a family group. Or perhaps a kill was nearby. That's what I hoped for—a fresh kill—something I could photograph. At the time I knew it didn't really make sense—a mature male and female at the site of a kill, unless one were stealing from the other or they were closely related—but the sun was too low in the sky to give anything much thought, and the trailing demanded all of my attention. I began to jog along the Cougars' trails, circling in on myself and jumping from trail to trail, all the while peering into every shadowy bush and dense growth for the dark telltale mound of a Cougar's cache. Several times I was fooled by the large nests of woodrats. As fast as I tracked, the sun moved quicker, and soon it was turning orange above the mountains to the west.
I followed numerous trails, looped in on myself countless times, and had turned up nothing. I'd not even revealed where any of the cougars had departed the confusion of converging trails. But with sunlight at a premium, I decided to backtrack the female up the wash to see if a piece of the larger story lay behind her. It did. A male lion had been following her down the wash and had cut into the bush farther up the drainage, where I hadn't initially seen his tracks.
I continued to follow her back trail. As the sun moved below the mountain range to the west and the entire canyon was bathed in rosy shadows, I jogged on, reluctant to leave such a beautiful trail. Higher and higher I climbed out of the canyon, but the light was fading fast. Eventually the light was so low, I moved at a crawl and walked in a bent crouch so that my eyes were closer to the ground. I kept losing the trail and having to circle back to find where she had turned. Finally I stood on a steep slope and appraised the areas that I had covered in the valley below and to the north where the cats had spiraled in on themselves. The temperatures were dropping as I began my trip back to camp.
The intimidating stare of a female cougar in a protective stance.
By the time I reached the wash, it was fully dark and stars were twinkling overhead. The simple notes of poorwills sounded in the distance, but otherwise the night was eerily quiet, and my footsteps in the sandy, gravelly wash seemed abrasive and loud. Niggling nervousness began to work its way into my mind, but I threw it off as the usual fears associated with being alone in the wilderness surrounded by fresh signs of Cougars.
Crunch, crunch, crunch, my footsteps echoed along the wash and out into the scrub. I moved quickly to fight off the dropping temperatures and to stop from shivering. The nervousness in the back of my mind hadn't resolved itself completely, and furrowed my brow. Then fear seized me like a slap in the face, and my gut twisted and froze. The moon had just crested the canyon's ridges, and its ghostly light filtered through the bushes and trees, creating shadows and shapes that suddenly appeared menacing and dark. My mind began to imagine a Cougar crouched in every shadow, and I picked up a few good rocks and began to massage my throwing arm to prepare for action in the cold.
“Stop it!” I told myself. “Get control of yourself. It's just the willies. Nothing to worry about. Another mile and a half and I'll be safely back at camp.” And so I told myself, “You have permission to be afraid if you see her tracks atop your own.” Not likely, I thought, convinced I'd beaten my own mind in the game.
I walked perhaps 50 yards farther before the moon rose high enough to bathe the floor of the wash. Then I saw them. I knelt to study my own tracks made just hours before. And there was no denying it: there were the fresh tracks of a female Cougar atop my own, and she was tracking me. I stood quickly and looked behind me. I was spooked and nervous. I worked my throwing shoulder and rolled my first rock in my hand.
I began to walk quickly down the drainage to the safety of my truck. I stopped with regularity to listen for footsteps behind me, and to look for a Cougar's form in pursuit. I avoided any area where she could attack from above, winding my way down the shadowy wash that seemed to stretch on for eternity. But I arrived safely back at camp, where I decided to sleep in the bed of my truck. With great relief, I slipped into my sleeping bag, thrilled to have shared an evening with another predator.
I awoke some time later with the certainty that I was being watched. The moon was straight overhead and bright. I sat up and peered into the contrasting landscape of dark shadows and reflected moonlight. Nothing but trees, shrubs, shadows, and crisp, cool air. The canyon was utterly silent. I coaxed myself back to sleep, but in what seemed an instant I was wide awake yet again. I gazed out over the edge of my truck bed and beyond the open tailgate at the pines and canyon slopes. Still nothing. Eventually I fell asleep again, and slept through to the first hints of light the next morning.
It was cold, but I was eager to head up drainage to discover where the cat had been when we encountered each other in the wash the night before. So I donned several layers and grabbed a water bottle to fill at the spring. But I stopped at the perimeter of my camp, perhaps 10 meters from where I'd slept. There were her tracks, and she was accompanied by two large kittens, perhaps 10 to 12 months of age. I followed her as she circled my camp, where at intervals she approached where I slept to have another look. She appeared curious. The kittens too, but they never approached as closely as she did. Then she led her kittens down to Nettle Springs for a drink. I continued to follow her as she circled uphill behind the springs and back to where I had slept. She had peered down at me from a height, and then she moved with her family up the hill to the plateau above.
It took the remainder of the day to piece the entire story together, after following her tracks in every direction to relay this story: She'd followed my tracks for half a mile up the drainage to where we'd met in the dark. No doubt she'd heard me coming. She moved off to the north side of the drainage, lay sphinxlike in the shadows of a manzanita bush, and watched me as I passed. From there, she worked her way up the hillside, cutting east as she climbed, paralleling the wash below. Soon she began a more vertical ascent to the north, before dropping into a tiny hidden canyon. It was there she'd left her kittens.