Woohooo! Our next Tracking Club meeting is coming up this weekend (April 24 from 1-4pm in the Humber Valley… meeting in King’s Mill Parking Lot). Here’s a post from last month, along with a link to a Torontoist article on p.i.n.e. and the Tracking Club!

“Ah the eternal struggle between cotton candy and trail mix.
My niece had no doubt which was winning out in her mind as she gazed longingly at the cart parked in the parking lot near the High Park zoo. But it took only minutes for her to come around to my perspective (namely that we were here to play in the woods and eat nuts and berries, not sugary cotton-batten), thanks to a giant fort built over an eroded hole in the side of a hill and covered with sticks; a beat down animal path through the woods that led to a raccoon, rabbit or coyote hole (we’re still not sure which); and a half hour spent chasing her brother around on all fours in a game of fox-and-raccoon.
There were enough explorers in attendance for us to split into three groups, and after an unselfconscious sing-a-long to start us off, we set out with a scavenger hunt list in hand. On the list: something soft, something spiky, something that smelled good and something that smelled bad, something that tasted good and something that tasted bad, an animal’s home, something alive, something dead, and a good hiding place. One group’s ‘alive’ siting was a resident coyote, whom they tracked through print and scent until they found him hanging out in a marshy area, looking not at all surprised that he’d been found.
After learning how to walk like a raccoon and fox and bound like a squirrel, my hip flexors were screaming in pain, and I knew I’d had a good afternoon. It was the first day of spring, and I’d seen some swelling buds, smelled some coyote pee and stroked a branch of staghorn sumac, named for its resemblance to the young, velvety antlers of a male deer. My nephew had a chick-a-dee land on a branch inches from his face while he was in the hiding spot he’d found, and though there was no cotton candy for my niece, there was a cookie waiting in the car and some throughly grass-stained jeans to take home as a trophy.”