by Sarah Bernstein.
Fox walking is the act of placing your foot on
the ground before you put your weight down on it. This consciousness with each
step forces you to slow down, take shorter strides and be more aware of the
ground you are walking on.
When Sunnyland Elementary arrived on Monday,
March 26th, the Wolf trail group began practicing fox walking in
hopes that the week might bring us some wildlife to sneak up on. The following
morning we were the first group to head out on the trail for the day. Little
did we know our practice as fox walkers would become so valuable as we searched
the Environmental Learning Center trails for signs of wildlife.
As we hiked away from campus one student, Egypt,
curiously asked if it might be a good time of day to see a deer on the trail. I
replied that we were a big group, usually making enough noise to scare away
deer, and that though I do see them around the Environmental Learning Center
regularly, they are rare except for the early morning and twilight hours.
To our delightful surprise, only a few minutes
later, the group stopped short upon seeing something farther down in the middle
of the trail. There was a deer looking right back at us. It quickly scampered
into the brush and the group used our fox walking skills to move quickly behind
the deer. We watched the deer reappear above us on the hill, sticking it’s head
out from up above a plant to curiously observe us down below before
disappearing again. The students waited patiently for the deer to return and
when we realized that it was gone we excitedly discussed our deer sighting and
the benefits of being able to fox walk towards it.
As we kept hiking and increased in elevation
throughout the day on our way up towards Sourdough Creek Falls, we started to
walk through more rocky terrain and talus slopes. All of a sudden I saw a flash
of brown move out of the corner of my eye. My group, quick to respond, fox
walked to join up with me. We sat quietly and patiently and in a matter of
moments a pika scurried out of its rocky home to rest on an exposed rock and
get a better look around. The group watched on as the pika moved its head from
side to side before turning around and running back into the rocks from where
it had come. We fox walked closer, stepping ball to heal and ball to heal with
each movement, to where the pika had disappeared in hopes of getting another
glimpse. To our dismay it did not return from its rocky hiding place. The
students had never heard of a pika before and were fascinated to learn about
the eeepp noise it makes and its practice of drying out grasses for
storage to help get them through the winter.
Later that afternoon, we switched from fox walkers to
trackers as we crossed a snowy patch of trail coming down from the waterfall.
As we crossed the snow we observed a set of tracks that had crossed in the same
place as we had but took up less room along the right hand side of the trail.
There seemed to be one track following another, big enough to be a cougars with
four front toe pads and a lack of nail marks, headed in the same direction as
the group. Luckily we made it to the top of the trail with no other need for
our fox walking skills, as cougars are much more frightened of a big group of
students than a deer or a pika. We enjoyed in a tasty sack lunch at the
waterfall while excitedly discussing the abundance of wildlife and wildlife
signs we saw that morning by using our fox walking and observational skills.
Leading photo by Hayley Boothe. Graduate student Sarah Bernstein leads her group of Sunnyland students as they explore animal signs on the trail.
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