My friend Julian Fisher recommended a book to me he thought I would enjoy. It was Baptiste Morizot’s On the Animal Trail. I got it and I asked him if he would like to do a “book report, not a review” with me, where we could just have a good conversation about what we were thinking and learning about through reading the work. Julian is a philosopher, and I am a tracker. Why not share in the feast of ideas that is On the Animal Trail together?
Baptiste writes beautiful accounts of tracking non-human animals, and describes some lessons he/we have been offered by these cohabitants. He also asks us to look a little deeper into these lessons and into our relationships with these communities. Can tracking change how we see the world by changing the way we interact with the world? Can following animal trails help us find a deeper sense of belonging to place because we are more in tune to the relationships happening around us? Julian and I get into it.