In this episode of Dear Grandchildren: A Tracker’s Tale, I walk you through a kind of awareness that can’t be found in a textbook—only through lived experience. This isn’t a list of steps. It’s not about memorizing technique. It’s about learning to listen differently.

We begin on a back deck during a quiet party and end up unraveling decades of human impact, fox trails, garden history, owl routines, and shifting forests—all in under five minutes. Not because of magic, but because of attention.

From there, we travel through stories of skunk spray, broken vertebrae, guerrilla gardening, porcupines, and underwater duck grabs, all to circle back to the real point: that survival—and peace—come from plugging in. Not just to the forest, but to the invisible patterns all around us. Ancestral influence. Modern disruption. Immediate needs. The things we forget to see until life slows us down.

This is the groundwork. Before we grow in awareness, we must root it in place. This is how I do it—and maybe it’s how you’ll start, too.