Mammal Encounters

I've encountered several types of mammals out here in the desert, so far it has been a lot of coyotes, squirrels, rats, and one sighting of a jack rabbit.

I'm always amazed at how they find ways to keep cool, stay hydrated, find food, maintain shelter. It's very humbling to know they're so well adapted, I have require so many tools, technologies, devices, and contraptions to survive. I'm far from being as primal as they are, or as any indigenous desert dwelling human is that still practices ancestral ways.

I just hope to day by day become stronger, more adapted, more acclimatized, more resilient so I can continually shed the layers of modernity and get back to the old ways. If they can survive out here, I know it's not impossible. And with human ingenuity that's limited by ethics to stay all-natural and non-toxic, I can still find clever ways to build systems to keep me cool, hydrated, and fed, they'll just be ever more local and sustainable over time. Eventually I'd like to live at least one day of my life before I day where I can truly say that everything I'm wearing, eating, drinking, interacting with and so on, is of the land where I walk with my two feet. For now, the survival supplies and equipment I've imported at the scaffolding to help me get my natural human ecosystem built, ultimately, climate allowing, it will sustain itself with minimal future human effort, and no outside inputs other than what the blows, clouds drop, and sun shines.

At that point, I'll add myself to the list of mammals I've seen survive out there.





I've been amazed by how a cat that takes pride and ownership over the garden in a very defensive territorial manner can make a big difference in rodent control. I hope every cat can at least have some opportunities to be wild and free if only in a back yard. There's just something so rewarding about seeing them in their natural element, using all of those powers they have to make a living on their own.

Encountering racoons is rare and precious experience, we have so much in common. I often think we're able to connect at a deeper level.