End of 2025 Gratitude and our 2026 Calendar from Original Wisdom
Gratitude for 2025, our 2026 Calendar, a synopsis of 2026 programs that still have spaces available (there aren’t a lot!), and introducing a new (and FREE) community event – THE TRACKER HOUSE!
Wolf Tracking in Wisconsin February 2026 from Original Wisdom
Join our guides Matt Nelson and Abel Bean, and hosts Susan Bean and Sandy Reed, for Original Wisdom’s second 5-day wolf tracking program in the Wisconsin Northwoods!
November 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
Two of the iconic, endemic (native and occurring only in that region) species of Madagascar that we saw, and also saw the tracks, signs, and behaviours of, during our Wildlife, Culture, and Tracking Expedition to the island in October. On the left is a fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), Madagascar’s largest carnivorous mammal…
October 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
We just wrapped up our annual African Tracking Intensive! This year’s Track & Sign Identification portion took place in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, with six participants, while the Trailing portion was held in South Africa’s Lowveld Kruger region, also with six participants. Both locations provided an excellent foundation for teaching and practice—rich in species diversity and full of memorable encounters.
September 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
July came in with a roar at Original Wisdom, and August carried the sound forward. Our University of Aberdeen (Scotland) students joined us for an extraordinary conservation project in South Africa’s Lowveld region. Together, we tracked down a pride of lions, observed a groundbreaking veterinary surgery that has never before conducted on wild lions, and spoke directly with the veterinarians and reserve managers about the reasons behind the procedure, its challenges, and its potential outcomes.
July 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
Never idle for long, Kersey and Lee presented two CyberTracker Track and Sign ID certifications in their home area of the Kruger Lowveld of South Africa, where elephants regularly walk into our evaluations. In this photo, you see our group reviewing an answer together just beyond a big, steaming pile of elephant dung (look closely for our ruler).
June 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
A few years back, we welcomed two Sri Lankan students to our Nature Guide Training course in South Africa. Sixty days in our humble bushcamp forged not just new guides, but lifelong friends—and serious tracking enthusiasts. Since then, as those same students, Pasindu and Sameera, moved on to guide at the newly built Hilton Yala Resort on the edge of Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park, we often talked about reuniting. This year, it finally happened.
May 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
Our New Natural History Museum at the Kruger Tracker Campus – Original Wisdom’s home in Africa! We finally have a dedicated space to keep our stuff at The Kruger Tracker Campus! After years of collecting and transporting skulls, sticks, nuts, seeds, stones, stone tools, fossils, antlers, horns, nests, feathers, feet, scats, and other fascinating finds from the forests, fields, and bush, we now have a proper home for it all. (photo – A plaster-of-Paris cast of the tracks of a loping Cape clawless otter by Kersey Lawrence)
April 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
Our new book is out! TRACKING ANIMALS – A GUIDE TO TRAILING WILDLIFE, by Lee Gutteridge and Kersey Lawrence and published by Jacana Media. Filled with stories from Lee and Kersey, and other CyberTracker Evaluators. Available in print and as an eBook, and ordering info is inside. Also, look in the ONLINE EVENTS section of the Jan 2025 newsletter for links to a monthly article we write for the Hoedspruit Explorer, for some instruction and stories from the book to help whet your tracking appetite.
March 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
We found the Montana mountain lion’s tracks on a fresh skiff of newly fallen snow, crossing the road and ducking under a barbed wire fence along a trail that the deer regularly used. Her tracks were crisp, and our guide asked us if we’d like to abandon our original plan to look for a variety of tracks and signs, or would we like to follow her…
What would you do? To find out what our answer was, read on in the Snow Tracking section below…
January 2025 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
Four researchers and trainers working across continents, all with a passion for trackers and tracking.
Kersey is from the USA, Jiska is from the Netherlands, and both of them currently live in South Africa. Along with Matt Nelson (USA) and Sandy Reed (USA), the Soul of Tracking team are collaborating in a long-term international Tracking Research project through the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Read more about it here.
December 2024 Year in Review from Original Wisdom
Team Original Wisdom, Kersey Lawrence, Lee Gutteridge, Sandy and Cal Reed, Shane Hawkins, Hillary Lisowski, Samantha Snodgrass, Ozzy Banda, would all like to wish you happy holidays and a healthy and prosperous new year. As we close another year, we want to take a moment to thank all of you who have supported and joined us in our mission. Here’s to all the joys of the holiday season and to a New Year filled with hope, progress, and lots of Tracking!
Song and music by John Edmund, Story in the Sand.
November 2024 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
René Nauta from Holland tracks fallow deer in tough conditions in West Sussex, England. He earned his Trailing Specialist from CyberTracker Conservation, earning him the title of Senior Tracker when combined with his already achieved Track & Sign ID Specialist.
There are a number of new Specialists this month, in North America, Europe, and Africa. We’ll tell you a bit about the ones that Original Wisdom was directly involved with in this newsletter. The community of skilled Trackers is gathering momentum!
October 2024 News, Stories, and Events from Original Wisdom
Some nipped twigs taken from inside the large dung balls of an endangered black rhinoceros. We are so lucky to see these on their infrequent trails and I keep them in my pocket as “awareness reminders” of these secretive and dangerous beings.
Photo credit: Kersey Lawrence
Featured Event from South Africa:
On the Trail of Elephants: A story with Finger Lakes Community College participants from our upcoming book.
By Kersey Lawrence & Lee Gutteridge
Featured Event in North America:
Go Wild! Nature Fair in Coyote Run Fairfield Park
By Sandy Reed
Featured Event in Human Culture:
Wild Clay Pots
by Cal Reed
February 2024 News, Stories and Events from Original Wisdom
An eastern coyote straddle trots across Alum Creek in Ohio. This months leading photo was taken by Original Wisdom staff Sandy Reed in one of the rare moments this year that snow accumulated in central Ohio.
Tracking in the Wisconsin Northwoods – Nov 2023
We will be following the elk and the deer again in the Northwoods as the land is on the cusp of turning from leaves to snow. You never know what you are going to get and it’s always a full-body, full-brain adventure with our kith and kin. Trailing is a love song to Tracking. […]
Introducing the first Hoedspruit Tracking Club!
All people come from cultures that tracked animals. In every family group and village across the world, it was important that men, women, and children were able to identify tracks. But they didn’t need to know every track. They focused on the ones that were important. It was important to be able to see the […]
Daily Routines in Tracking – The Importance of Repetition
I’m not trying to sell you our course, but to let you know that the processes we follow are really helpful (many of them, I’m revealing for free here in this Newsletter). That’s what we aim to be… helpful. We want more people to become trackers (and naturalists, guides, teachers, and scientists) because we believe […]
What is a Track Trap?
In an earlier newsletter, I wrote about The Secrets of Success” for Tracking – The Lost Trail Drill. Here’s The Lost Trail Drill again: The Lost Trail Drill Because everyone loses the trail… Always know where your last confirmed track is, and go directly back to it. Choose the most obvious route, first, then the […]
Way of the CyberTracker – on the WildFed Podcast with Daniel Vitalis
I was recently interviewed by Daniel Vitalis of the WildFed podcast. Daniel also hosts a tv show of the same name on the outdoor channel. Both the podcast and the tv show are about “reconnecting people to wildness through food.” Yes, that means gathering …and hunting. And guess who the first trackers were? You got […]
Stories from My Research in Africa
A tracker in South Africa told me: “(When growing up) about ellies I did hear that if, if you do find them, or they do find you out in the bush you’ll find that they are more aggressive, so they’ll start chasing you down. And once they find you, you know that they’ll come and […]