A practical guide for use in various terrains describes and illustrates the tracks of hundreds of animals, from dinosaurs and birds to insects and mammals.

Offers practical advice on outdoor clothing, packs, sleeping bags, shelters, fire making, use of the ax, outdoor sanitation, camp cookery, edible plants, canoeing and trailcraft.

Training methods for tracking and wilderness observation woven into extraordinary real-life stories of intuitive animal-reading skills • Explains technical tracking methods and observational skills such as shadowing and envisioning through the innermost thoughts of an accomplished native tracker • Reveals how to track by expanding your awareness and consciousness to become one with the animal you are tracking • Shares stories of tracking Wolves, Bears, Deer, Cougars, and many other animals Stepping beyond the shape of a footprint and into the unseen story of the track, veteran wilderness guide Tamarack Song takes you inside the eyes and mind of an intuitive tracker, with intimate stories where Frogs show the way out of the woods, scat reveals life histories, and Bears demonstrate how to find missing people. Drawing from his years of surviving in the wild, apprenticing to native elders, and living with a family of wolves, Tamarack reveals how to achieve a level of perception like that of aboriginal trackers by becoming one with the animal you are tracking, whether Fox, Deer, Coyote, or Cougar. Sharing his innermost thoughts while following track and sign, the book’s adventures merge technical tracking methods with skills such as shadowing and envisioning, while demonstrating animal-reading skills considered outside the human realm. The author explains how to expand your awareness--to learn from nature by becoming nature--and tap in to the intuitive tracking consciousness each of us has inherited from our Paleolithic ancestors. Through his stories from the trail, Tamarack shows the art of tracking not simply as a skill for hunters and naturalists but as a metaphor for conscious living. By exploring the intricacies of the natural world, we explore not only our connections to the world around us but also our internal landscapes. We learn to better express ourselves and listen, meet our needs, and help others. Intuitive tracking provides a path to finding ourselves, becoming one with all life, and restoring humanity’s place in the Great Hoop of Life.

This book contains classic material dating back to the 1900s and before. The content has been carefully selected for its interest and relevance to a modern audience.

Two-thirds of this planet is covered by water inhabited by an incredible variety of living organisms, ranging in size from microbe to whale, and in abundance from scarce to uncountable. Whales and dolphins must surface to breathe, and some fishes occupy surface waters and can easily be seen from boats or shore, but most of the marine bio-profusion is hidden from human eyes, often under thousands of feet and millions of tons of water, which is usually cold, dark, and utterly inhospitable to humans. By definition, the study of marine life has been quantitatively and qualitatively different from the study of terrestrial life--it is, if you will, a different kettle of fish. What do we know today, how have we learned it, and what remains unknown and unknowable about inner space? Because there have been so few human visitors to the uninviting world of the deep sea, scientists have had to rely on trawled specimens, photographs taken by robotic cameras, or occasionally, observations from deep-diving submersibles, to get even the vaguest idea of the nature of life in the abyss. So far, even our most elaborate efforts to penetrate the blackness have produced only minimal results. It is as if someone lowered a collecting basket from a balloon high above the tropical rain forest floor, and tried to analyze the nature of life in the jungle from a couple of random hauls. The inner space of the deep offers the last frontier on the planet. Even now, we know more about the back side of the moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean, but then the surface of the moon is not hidden under miles of impenetrable water. But we do know that living in this inaccessible medium are some of the most fascinating creatures on Earth. An understanding of the interrelationships between various creatures-including the one predator that has the power to distort, damage, or even eliminate populations of marine animals-is necessary if we are to survive in harmony with these populations. Although new technologies have given us tools to better census the whales, dolphins, and fishes, and to see heretofore unexpected life and geological forms deep under the sea, we are a long way from comprehending the nature and importance of marine biodiversity. Singing Whales, Flying Squid, and Swimming Cucumbers is an attempt to put the search for knowledge into perspective-to try to find out how we got here, and where, with the help of curiosity, science, and technology, we might be headed. With this as our Baedeker, we will voyage through time and space, tracing the history of the discovery of marine biology, from the moment that the first scientists--although for the most part, "science" had barely been invented--tried to figure out what sorts of creatures lived in the Mediterranean, the sea right off their shores. So join Richard Ellis on an underwater adventure like no other you've ever taken or heard of: a voyage to discover the mysteries and reveal the wonders of marine life--more unusual and more astonishing than you--or anyone else--ever imagined.

The history of Yosemite National Park is as compelling as the waterfalls, monoliths, and peaks that have mesmerized visitors for more than a century. But what hikers see today in the iconic Yosemite Valley, as well as on the peaks in the high country and within the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, is a world away from the place Native Americans once called Ahwahnee, and from what gold-seekers and mountain men looked upon in the park’s earliest days. Historic Yosemite National Park is a vibrant collection of stories about different aspects of Yosemite National Park’s fascinating history, from the conservation works of pivotal characters such as writer John Muir and photographer Ansel Adams to the daring exploits of rock climbers and the natural forces that have shaped Yosemite’s stunning vistas. These stories reveal why Yosemite National Park has inspired humankind for centuries.