to know the land

When you want to get to know someone, you listen to the stories they have to share. We might ask some questions once in a while, but mostly we watch and listen and that’s how we learn more about who they are and how they exist in the world. We might go visit them in their spaces and ask more questions, like why do they hang out in a particular space more than another? Slowly we start to build a de...

Recently while tracking a Fisher ( Pekania pennanti ) in Algonquin Park we encountered a large galloping trail that had a long stride length of 106 cm (41¾ in). This was about 28 cm (10 in) longer than what is recorded in Mark Elbroch's “Mammal Tracks and Sign” (Stackpole, 2019). When I finished measuring, I was discussing this extraordinarily long stride with some colleagues. They told me about a...

Over and over on this podcast (and through the blog) I have spoken to the need to be outdoors and the value for us emotionally, physically, spiritually and socially in participating with the wider wilder world around us. But when these opportunities are interrupted by white-supremacist narratives on who belongs outdoors, the BIPOC Outdoor Gear Library steps up and reminds us that everyone belongs...

Tracker Certification North America is an evaluating body in the field of wildlife tracking and trailing, and so much more. They host evaluations which double as in depth community tracking and trailing training sessions, going deep on the explanations and pointing out how the evaluator can see what they can see. This process encourages dialogue, feedback and reflection, community discussion and a...

Cop City is an urban warfare training facility being built on the South side of Atlanta. To construct this sprawling $90 million compound stretching 85 acres, developers are bulldozing a forest. The stated motive for this project was to boost morale of police in the wake of the George Floyd uprisings, which showed that the public in Atlanta and elsewhere had lessening faith in the role of policing...

Dani Kastelein-Longlade and Amina Lalor along with with guest artists Katherine Rae Diemert and Brenda Mabel Reid have created an inspiring and beautiful exhibition, Journey With Our Kin ,  at the Queens Square Idea Exchange gallery in Cambridge Ontario. The exhibition is open until Feb. 5th, 2023. I got to talk with Dani and Amina about their work at the exhibition, and about how getting to...

Without much snow so far this winter, my tracking has been shifting towards other sign out on the land. Lately this has been signs on plants, scats, rubs, with a focus on Pileated Woodpecker feeding sign written in the bodies of the trees. I first noticed this kind of sign along the Bruce trail many years ago, and then again in Algonquin Park. These days, I just see it everywhere, and through shar...

I have a big affinity for the suburbs (I know, it’s weird), and the Eastern Screech feels like a suburban bird. They hang out along the riparian corridors with the tall older trees, hunting mice, crayfish, songbirds, and whomever else they can catch. I did the same when I grew up in Brampton, Ontario, but instead of mice, crayfish and songbirds, I was hunting for feral Apple ( Malus domestica ) tr...

“Wither, wither, black flowering night. May your dark juices bleed, burn up like a pool on the summer plain, shrivel like a stain upon sand, dwindle to a basalt pebble, tiny as a slow-worms eye is. Vanish, to nothing.” Here we are again, in the deepest of the doom season, yet with light on the way. The rebirth of the Sun. A time for our seasonal celestial celebrations with stories, food and fire....

It started with a suggestion that I could learn a little about how to differentiate between Canada Yew ( Taxus canadensis ), Eastern Hemlock ( Tsuga canadensis ), and Balsam Fir ( Picea balsamifera ), but then it turned into a zany rabbit-hole of discovery, confusion and awe. This episode details a lot of the complicated information I have been coming into while trying to learn more about Canada Y...

Many of us have been there. You find a nest, you look inside, and there huddled amid the grasses, vines and twigs are small nearly naked nestlings. Maybe the nest isn’t familiar, or soon as you realize it is occupied you get out as fast as you can so as to not disturb.. but later when reviewing some photographs you begin to wonder who is was in the nest?  Or maybe you are a wildlife rehabilit...

“ Fewer ramps per pound means more ramps in the ground ”. Ramps? Wild Leeks? Allium tricoccum ? Whatever you call them, they are a type species for foraging and everyone wants to be in relationship with them. Often that means everyone is looking for them and trying to bring some home, or sell them at markets or fine restaurants, sometimes without care or consideration as to what is best for the Ra...

This episode is a bit of a vulnerable one. I talk about some profound lessons which really impacted me, and shook some of my self image. I also feel a bit exposed by acknowledging I have honestly received some profound lessons from interactions with a dead Great Horned Owl ( Bubo virginianus ). Essentially the show is about theft, and honouring our values & commitments to the world around us,...

Tis’ the season to be considering the concepts of death and decay. We can smell it in the cool wet woods, and we can see it draped across the doorways along our streets. Skeletal trees sway with boney branches scratching at grey skies, and the dark is ever creeping in. Why not celebrate some of the most profound and interesting parties involved in this death and decomposition : Fungi! This weeks s...

“One of the things we tend to do culturally, the framework is to separate humans from the earth and to see them as two separate entities, rather then seeing that as an interconnected relationship..” My experience with Memona is that she is all about challenging that feeling of separateness and working towards restoring and remediating that disconnect between the sacred Earth and us humans who may...

It’s easy, pretty accessible and turns out to be a lot of fun and often full of learning. A sit spot, or magic spot, or secret spot or whatever else you might call it is simple. Just go find your sit spot, close to home, accessible and easy and then sit there, quietly. That’s it. The act, or lack of acting really, really pays off. I have a ton of stories of exciting encounters with the world beyon...

After a delay of a week, Justin Kestler and I got to talk about his new book The Hair Scale Identification Guide to Terrestrial Mammalian Carnivores of Canada . This concise book is a quick guide to interpreting the origin of hairs based on the morphology of scales along the cuticle (outer side) of the hair. It’s not like a fingerprint per se, which attempts to identify an individual human, but in...

Gallformers.org has been referred to me by a few friends over the past few months as they helped me to identify some unknown galls I have found in the field. I have written about galls on the toknowtheland.com website many times as well ( 1 )( 2 )( 3 ), usually having to refer back to gallformers.org finally figure out who made them. I got to ask a ton of questions and we got to talk about why Jef...

“It was a clear night, and the stars were as visible as they get around this area within the city. I made out Polaris and the Big Dipper earlier while looking for a place to record. I noticed a faint breeze, coming from my neighbourhood blowing down towards the river…” Just over a year ago I went for a walk along the river by my house and I pressed record and put my recorder down. I walked away fo...

I am overwhelmed sometimes by the sheer diversity and quantity of Spider species I encounter. So many! I take a ton of photos and bring them up on my computer hoping to try and identify a couple, and maybe write about who I am seeing out there, but the precious few who I have been successful in identifying are just that, the precious few . Not many at all. It has been hard to find a good field gui...

Daniella Roze lives this stuff. Seriously. She has spent years living off grid in a small community of folks learning how to live in closer connection with their land base out West. She has done month long adventures with a crew of women living with only the hides on their backs and whatever they could harvest from the land. She is also the founder, and was the former director and lead instructor...

What is scat? Well, in the great words of a creative crew of naturalists*, Starts with “S” and it ends with a “T” It comes out of you and it comes out of me I know what your thinking but don’t call it that Let’s be scientific and call it “SCAT” Why would someone write a book about scat? Why would someone need a book about scat? What’s so special about scat? Finding and identifying scat is definite...

Jenna Rudolph has been running an nature school on unceded territories on the West coat of the continent. What does it mean to support students in developing connections to a land base that is stolen from indigenous people? It would be easy to shy away from the question, as many have for so long, but Jenna and her colleagues at Soaring Eagle Nature School are trying to explore this question direct...

On July 24, 2017, Jessica Reznicek admitted to engaging in acts of sabotage to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,886 km long (1,172 miles) underground oil pipeline running through indigenous territories, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as under part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Her actions resulted in 4-month delay in pipeline constructio...

Baptiste Morizot has changed the way I look at the world. He has offered a depth to the nuance of my relationships by giving them words and concepts to draw from. He examines in great detail how we relate (in the familial/ancestral sense, and the geopolitical sense) to other life forms with whom we share the planet. In anxious times we need to hold each other closer, and that motion is still alive...