By Wendi Wu, Philadelphia Animal Tracking Club
I’m not an expert.
I’m a learner.
Just three and a half years in the U.S., just over two years of tracking, English as my second language.
And yet tracking has helped me root myself in a new land.
It has taught me to slow down, observe, and notice the hidden stories of animals around us.
And it has given me a way to build community around wonder.
A tracking club doesn’t need to be formal.
It just needs people who are curious.
People who want to go outside.
People who want to share what they notice.
The people who came to our first tracking club were amazing:
– An immigrant family whose child “believes he is an animal”
– A city park landscaper, curious about tracks he has seen for years
– Environmental educators sharing their deep knowledge
Everyone had stories–animal encounters tucked in memory, and it was beautiful to watch those stories come alive as we learned to “read” the signs our wild neighbors leave behind.
It felt meaningful that our first meetup happened during The Reset: a national day to unplug from screens and reconnect with the world, initiated by Outward Bound.
Tracking is perfect for that.
It is slow. Observational. Grounded in presence.
It mirrors scientific reasoning: forming hypotheses, testing them, and discovering something new.
And none of it happens on a screen.
It happens with our senses fully alive to the landscape. The REAL world.
Tracking reconnects us—to the land, to animals, and to our own innate ability to wonder.
So here we are in Philadelphia, Northeast America, and hopefully all over the world—meeting in parks, city squares, environmental centers, in snow, in sand, in mud, following the signs animals leave behind. A group of strangers becoming a community, one footprint at a time.
Maybe in a small way, we can stitch the natural world, the real world, back together again—connected, whole.
If I can do it, truly, you can too.
Start small. Invite friends. Follow tracks. Ask questions. And let the land teach you.
Because belonging isn’t something you wait for—it’s something you build.
