Pınar & So

Tracking can at its most simple be defined as a praxis of ecological listening, whether what you track is fire, fossils, or footprints. As trackers, we know every human animal has an incredible ability for listening, pattern recognition, discernment, questioning their initial assumptions, for hypothesis, for science. So many sciences are traditional, ancient, Indigenous, like wayfinding, wildlife tracking, plant medicine, ecology, seed tending, memory craft, bird language … If we did not have these abilities we would not be here, our ancestors would not have survived. We are often not born into cultures that teach discernment and granularity with regard to our environment, we assume this knowledge exists cemented in books, in the minds of faraway experts (We respect expertise and mastery—and YET we don’t like the “expert halo” heuristic trap that will dispossess each of us of our own abilities to listen). We need to learn these things and no politics will give us these. No (human-centered) politics will tell us how to listen to a hermit thrush. This we must grow, within our communities. — Tracking may not be a (solely human) politics, but it’s a practice, a more than human politics, a monastic practice that produces sermons of togetherness, rituals of astonishment. I want my practices to destroy my old ideas and grow new ones. I want my practices to show me something I’ve never seen before. I want seeds to germinate in my confirmation bias and sprout into something that is dreaming us. I want the earth to theorize me through her mycelia. What is this, if not a monasticism pointing a way forward through the hall-of-mirrors of modernity? — Our prayer is that we can be witnessed too, by those who would otherwise be wary of us due to our animal embodiments of gender, culture, or disability, not out of surveillance but out of curiosity. ((CONTINUED IN COMMENTS))

Most Things Leave a Trace. This is the premise of Tracking, the oldest science. This is really more spellwork than critique, but we are able to believe it’s possible to Leave No Trace because of a deanimated view of the world that was/is imposed upon us. Obviously, we can still refrain from littering, we can reduce our impact, and practice awareness of the traces we do leave, while still believing in the inevitability of Traces; participating in that animistic revival. Countertracking (covering one’s tracks) is an ancestral art of resistance, too, and is an example of how an intimacy with Traces means that we sometimes devote a lot of focus to concealing (though never really erasing) them. __ Tracking is a way of seeing that anticipates animacy everywhere by looking for its effects on matter. This includes the scuff of paw on dirt, but also extends to the low hanging branch sweeping a crescent on the ground below as the wind blows, the seaweed and driftwood etching a water line across the beach. Rare is the surface or substrate that is free from traces of the animate. __ Many of us tune out traces of the animate as sensory background noise. The labyrinthine beetle galleries are just part of our mental search image for “log.” They are not named, not introduced to us, unless perhaps we become entomologists. The pushed-down grass in the meadow from where the deer bedded down at night are ‘just part of how meadows look.’ But Life braids around us, skirts around the edges of our awareness, plays hide and seek in the shadows of our sensory fields. In the practice of becoming more aware of these ghostly passages that occur when I’m not looking (because that’s when 90% of global or local events occur, though various media tricks us into thinking otherwise) I notice that life becomes more full of something; Mystery. ((CONTINUED IN COMMENTS)) 📸 by @pattiegonia

It’s time for a (re)introduction post! We are Pınar and So (both they/them), the co-stewards of this organism. Queer Nature is an eco-social sculpture (life as art) and education project. We envision 'queer ancestral futures' by tending to LGBTQIA+ and two-spirit community at the intersection of place-based skills, survival and disaster skills, and philosophy/eco-mysticism. We hope to further conversations and embodiment of ecological consciousness from anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives that also claim the queer, the strange, and the “divergent” as natural and necessary pathways to paradigm shift and re-enchantment. Mysticism & Philosophy are part of eco-justice and activism! They are not confined to academia, nor to written expression. Identity is about the geography and interrelation of our bodies but it also is about bodies in place, in relation with other than humans. — Queer Nature is a love story! 😘 We met almost 8 years ago while studying nature-based mentorship in the Pacific Northwest. One of our first dates was going to a Turkish grocery store, where we connected over similar ancestral foods (Pınar is half Turkish and So is half Greek, 1st generations). 🧿 We bought Feta, wrinkled olives, & sour cherry preserves 😛! — Pınar’s educational background was in ecopsychology and trauma studies and So had a background in theology and ecology. We were both inspired by the twin portal for mythic healing & preparedness/nervous system recalibration offered through place based skills & naturalist studies, especially for trans & queer souls. But we realized that these skills, which come from lifeways, are not neutral when practiced on stolen land. Many histories of violence underlie and even accompany our ability to access “land” and practice “skills.” That they are not neutral doesn’t mean we should disengage though. It can present a portal into deeper awareness, listening to, and accountability with the living materials, beings, and land around us, and our ancestors and the ancestors of others. Tracking systems of oppression is part of so-called “natural history.” 💚 What else do y’all want to know about us? 🏳️‍⚧️

A rabbit skull near its current resting place at the foot of central Washington’s iconic, lichen-encrusted columnar basalt cliffs. I won’t say “final” because all traces of animals—of us—continue to be tossed and churned 🌊 in matter’s flow, however slow-motion the terrestrial version of this dynamic may be. This carnal fluid dynamics ( #taphonomy ) is as gentle as the wind on bones, and as swift as their fall from a raptor’s feeding perch high in the rim rocks. — I find remains a lot but apprehending this skull, nearly glowing in the blue-hour light (and then further illuminated by my pocket UV light) moved me noticeably. Immediately I just thought “they’re at home.” And it sounds so simple but somehow it’s an easy sentiment to bypass sometimes. No doubt I’ve been thinking about eulogies (and elegies which are related) so much these last few years after losing my parents. I experience so much of the praise and litany that I feel is inherent in naturalist interpretation as within this genre of lament expression—not because of any fixation on endings, but simply because of the ephemeral nature of all things. Because the lives of wild critters is a worthy drama. Because the process of ecocide is worthy of intoning such a praise/lament (oikos = home / dwelling place in Greek) which I’ve interpreted as killing of homes (of any species or persons) and therefore, the dispossession of the chance for a being to die in their home, surrounded by their kin. 🌀 🕯️ — I included a photo of some (bushy-tailed) Woodrat urine deposit, very common on these cliffs, illuminated by ultraviolet light

We press against matter and it presses back—the gravity that causes us to fall with each step, and the ground reaction force that accelerates us back into our stride after our feet hit the ground, are as responsible for locomotion as our own muscles and mind. __ We think so much about the agency of the animal with locomotion and its traces. Exertion of will along nerves and muscles, pushing against stuff. But half of locomotion is just falling. — Our power as beings, the texture and lilt of our souls, is inextricable from the consuming gravity, the decompositional ability, of the earth, and the universe.  I’m a sucker for the perennial themes in Hesse’s work, the high drama of the ‘battle’ between spirit and flesh. The archetype of the chthonic mother, a sort of hybrid Kali-Mary, who represents our final courtship. Wolf as a fission-fusion dynamo who is alone and knit together in kinship at once. Some people will say that it’s all dualistic. Problematic, cliché. Perhaps I used to say as much. But the strands of life and death, motion and stillness, twining together is not “dualism.” It’s alchemy. I’m not really sure anything is really the opposite of anything else. I think it’s more about presence and absence. I think those are the under-sung building blocks of the world of bodies. — & when loved ones release that spark of life in your arms, it is undeniable that we are, even at our most down regulated and subdued, surging beings of eros, raging against “the dying of the light.” Raging against the stochastic, just as we are formed by it. It is undeniable that everything alive contains a sort of prayer for dignity, even if all available forces attempt to subvert that outcome. It’s undeniable that we flow between a sort of stasis and an ardent urge to transform.  We will always be reined to the carnal gravity of animality and I welcome the binding, it calms me down. Even if this land rages, burns, floods, I still can’t help but love it and in that I feel the most profound surrender. If you go deep enough into this marrow, there you will too find a sort of world of spirit, not floating above, but within, woven, knitted. Truly everything, everything is twined. 🪢

May our homes , our territories, our families be safe this year as we continue as always at the mercy of this living planet — it’s the simplest of prayers really, one we learn from the wolves 🐺 🧝🏻‍♀️ — (The science: urine and other bodily fluids contain compounds that biofluoresce, which is not the same as bioluminescence. The latter is when organisms create light, the former is a reaction in responds to particular wavelengths of light.)

Glowing mountain lion pee! 🦁 🚿 🪩 I have been on a deep dive study of marking behaviors in wild felines in my area the last couple of years. Many times when we encounter bobcat and mountain lion scrapes (and lynx, who also occasionally make scrapes!), it is difficult to observe the very small “token” amounts of urine that are deposited after cats scuff up these piles of debris with their hind feet. This can lead us to assume that urine is not deposited at all. To rule out this “false negative,” especially in the absence of snow, we can use a UV light. But when there is a little snow in there it looks really cool! Swipe right to see a video of me showing the scrape in both white light and UV light. Many feline species make shallow scrapes or “scuffs” with their hind feet to create olfactory and perhaps visual marks. The global distribution implies that this is an ancient and deeply conserved behavior.

@queerquechua helped me set up a mirrorless @camtraptions set at a moose trail junction with nice little rut pit where a couple of bulls are visiting. Watch to see who is winning the floor show so far! 🫎 👠

Wow, I was not expecting what I’d find when I started making this video! Mountain lion clawing sign—one of the best examples I’ve ever seen. Cats doing this sharpens their claws, and they also do it because it feels good and from observing cats a ton I tend to see it as representing a content and relaxed/happy state.

My friends @moskowitz_david and @thebodypoet are running an on-demand online course on mammal bones for trackers and naturalists. They have several price point options for folks. This will be part one of a two part series, and it starts this coming week. Myself and a bunch of other folks I know who are trackers, biologists, and naturalists are signed up 😀 🦴 go to payhip.com/mammalbones to sign up — Confused about dental formulae or the lexicon of the anatomical directions? Dave and Nyn have got you covered. It’s going to be a fun nerdy time.

We still have scholarship spots available for our upcoming Wildlife Field Techniques course with @queernature this fall 🐾 This course is created for LGBTQ+ individuals who are aspiring or current wildlife professionals, and through the generosity of @rewild we are able to offer two full scholarships for US indigenous participants! Scholarships cover registration, lodging, and a portion of food and travel. We are accepting applications on a rolling basis, so don't miss out! Learn more and apply now through the link in our bio.

He moves through sound like a ghost (Its own sort of music) The creeks are so full now that even the silence unfurling from him like smoke Is covered by the roar. Things loud and quiet at once It’s just what a forest sounds like With a healthy underworld. — the snow line rises every spring, a curtain and deer float up that stage like cinders Spiraling through the still-wet drainages (Animals are merely the part of rivers that flow uphill) And he, cryptic king, Is the sinuous stitch Binding the worlds, the ridges to the ravines, A book made of dried hide And bones like broken pottery. There is no such thing as a grave here Just a tiny place where a toe bone lies Sentences scripted by stylus claws Are only written in invisible ink Their meaning decays into shit, literally Which might be the best outcome. And maybe the grasses grow greener there — The shepherd keeping things from standing too still Though he and his kin, most hours Are like stones of sand Cats might dream, actually, more than we do — CALL & WRITE YOUR SENATORS!! Especially in red states. We need to continue the bipartisan momentum resisting the disastrous sale of public lands. The land must breathe, and federal selloff will suffocate it, and with it, our souls, too. — 📸 and ✍🏼 “Spring Lion” @cyberpunkecology