Out in the world, into your breath

By Tom Sienstra

A Hoopa tribal elder called it "going invisible." My expedition partner calls it "getting into your breath." One of the nation's leading wildlife instructors for children calls it "watching your wake."

"You have to go into the woods like you're invisible," said the late Jimmy Jackson, a tribal elder for the Hoopa tribe on the Trinity River. "Then you'll start seeing all kinds of things."

"If you ever feel disconnected from nature, get into your breath," said my hiking partner, Michael Furniss. "Everything starts right here," he said, pounding the center of his chest with a fist. "Get into your breath and all your senses come alive. That's when the world opens up to you."

Wildlife instructor Jon Young, who runs the Wilderness Awareness School, compared the approach people take when hiking, biking, fishing or hunting to running a boat and the wake you create. A big wake can scare all the fish, birds and wildlife along the shore.

"When we walk in the woods, we create our own wake, just like a boat on a lake," Young said. "I've seen situations where a hunter is hiking out on a game trail and startles a blue jay. The blue jay starts squawking and alerts a deer, which runs out. It turns out the guy doesn't get his deer because of the blue jay. But what really happened is his wake disturbed the woods."

Jackson, Furniss and Young agree that one small change in your approach in the great outdoors can transform your experiences, not only how much wildlife you see and how many fish you catch, but your satisfaction.

You've got to get invisible, get into your breath, and keep your wake down.

The need for this approach is one of the reasons why 90 percent of hunters in California do not get their buck, a lot of hikers don't see much wildlife, many anglers don't catch fish and most bikers never see much of anything.

Young, who teaches youngsters to "minimize their wake," starts by having kids listen to birds talking to each other. "When they listen to the bird language, that's when nature starts to open up for them."

Before he died in his 90s, Jackson and I spent several days on the Hoopa land. He told his stories, the old lore, and talked about exploring the woods as if you were invisible. He was shocked that some hunters wondered why they never saw any bucks when they spent their time hunting by driving along forest roads on ATVs or pick-up trucks. He did not understand how those in boats could roar around at high speed without a thought to their surroundings but were surprised they didn't see much wildlife or catch fish.

"These young guys, a lot of them they don't learn the old ways," Jackson said. "They think it's a waste of time."

Yet the payoffs to a quiet approach can be extraordinary.

On one trip in the Alaska wilderness, I remember watching Ed Rice, the world-renowned fly fisher, after he saw a huge rainbow trout roll in the headwaters of a pool on the Moraine River in Katmai National Park. There was a chance the giant fish saw his shadow on the water, Rice said, so he took a seat on a bluff above the river, and then watched the pool for 45 minutes.

After he spotted a swirl on the surface, Rice's face lit up. "He's ready now." He spent 15 minutes to work slowly into position, and then, on his first cast, he hooked the giant trout. After a sensational fight where the fish streaked and zigzagged like a steelhead pricked with a cattle prod, Rice brought the fish to the shallows and released it. It was 18 pounds. The key to hooking it, Rice said, is that the fish never knew he was there.

You might say Rice got invisible, took the time to get into his breath, or had no wake.

On our trips into wilderness, Furniss always carves out time to sit on a rock with an overlook of a stream or meadow. After an hour or so, he thus becomes part of the setting, and that's when he starts seeing trout feed in streams, deer come out in meadows, and birds calling for mates.

Originally printed in the San Francisco Chronicle, September 21, 2008.