Tracks and Signs...

I drove the truck down to Michael after he put the tractor in the shed. He took the truck on to work and I walked up the gravel and dirt road towards mama’s house. Walking with my head down, lost in thought, squiggles and tracks in the dirt caught my eye. Invisible night passages made visible during morning light were a shorthand record of all that had used the road while I slept.
As a child. I loved to read James Fennimore Cooper and other writers who told of now arcane skills of tracking... reading the writing in the surrounding natural world. Cowboys and Indians who could squat in the dust, chew thoughtfully on a weed (or chewing tobacco), speak with authority about who was going where and who had come and gone, entranced my imagination. I began practicing my tracking skills walking the sandy dirt road between my house and the bus stop.
Snake tracks were easy to pick out and we had plenty of snakes in South Georgia. Dog tracks and doodlebugs were also easy to find but some marks in the sand eluded me. Was that a possum trail or racoon? Did that broken branch mean something big had passed by or did it just break? Deciphering the signs and tracks was going to take a lifetime to learn and I moved on to another fascination... fairies. Fairies also left evidence of their passing. Invisible creatures of great beauty, they danced in the night in circles leaving flattened grass where their feet had frolicked. I became a fairy tracker looking for signs of their presence in my world.
Now I live on a farm, sharing it with all kinds of other creatures that I rarely see. Once in a great while I might see the fox but if my eyes were trained, I could see where the fox walks. The deer come and go, traveling invisible paths made visible now in the tall grass. They are easy to see. The black snake slides his way up the hill leaving no sign of his passage in the grass but squiggles in the dirt mark his crossing the road. Turtles, racoons, possums, groundhogs, bear... all leave their tracks as they pass by. I still have time to learn to read these marks in the dirt.
Wendell Berry, one of my favorite poets and authors, argues for the particularity of place, settling down and learning one place on this earth very well. I like that. Most of us pass through this world having a nodding acquaintance with all that surrounds us. We have become citizens of the world who don’t know our own backyard. When I know my place here on earth, it is easier to read the tracks and signs of God’s passing, God’s presence in my world. This knowledge can free me to be kin to all who know their place as well. The Palestinian farmer, the Columbian coffee grower, the Chinese rice farmer, the city dweller, the small town resident, the suburban subdivision family... all have a place they can observe and know, live in and not just pass through. And when I am planted, rooted in my one place, I can see the changes, the tracks of God in all that surrounds me.
“Thou didst set the earth on its foundations so that it should never be shaken.” This earth, this Sabbath Rest Farm, is a gift to me, an opportunity to settle in and settle down, to wait on God. If I should miss God’s passage in the night, I can learn to read the tracks and signs left on the world around me. And when I lose sight of God, all I have to do is go looking for tracks left behind in the peepers songs, the baby finches, the black snake taking a sun bath in a tree, and the clucking of baby chicks now grown into teenagers with big feet. God is in heaven and all is right with the piece of the world I know best. Thanks be to God for this day of spring filled joy. Amen.