Inextricably Intertwined

Meeting Meghan Walla-Murphy completely changed the way I do my reality: I believe firmly that we are inextricably intertwined, and Meghan has spent her life showing just how true our interconnections are. We connected over the ancient art of tracking, and until I joined her in a group of women, all intent on learning how to track the animals and wildlife around us, I had not really opened my eyes to this phenomenally important and intrinsic skill set. 

Now, I cannot go a day, or hardly an hour without witnessing, listening, and paying lots of attention to the play of the wild world all around me. A world that I am part of, that is inextricably interwoven and interconnected to me and my life. For me, tracking has become this elemental dance of all the sights, sounds, sensations, and signs that I seek out and that seek me! 

Interviewing Meghan, I felt eternally grateful for her efforts to live as a tracker in a modern paradigm that has forgotten how interconnected we all are to everything that is, and also I’m in awe of her commitment to spread the knowledge of this fundamental skill into the world. 

Whenever I find myself feeling disconnected and separate from the great play of life, it’s a great time to go outside, get into nature, and shift my focus to the web all around me —one which I am a part of, and which needs me as much as I need it. 

I often get into my head and forget to honor the literally everything besides my own mental tangent that feels so alive and real. In those moments I also try to track my emotions —a skill that I learned at Meghan’s Western Women’s Tracking Conference with Michelle Vesser (who I interviewed this season as well and you can hear our podcast episode “Engaging with Life” that came out on the Summer Solstice 2022). 

Through tracking my own emotions, I have been able to get back to the core of me, the experience of myself as a whole. And, then situated in my own role in the great play of all that is, I’m able to experience the truth of both my own reality and the vast, infinite ways that I am related to everything else!

In our interview, Meghan shares about her own experiences coming into the tracking ethos, and the ways that it has shaped her path, helped her understand ecological conservation more intimately, and forged a life of service, in support of wildlife, in support of humans situating ourselves in the narrative of tending the wild, and in support of sharing the vast knowledge that she has at the intersection of tracking and biology. 

May your journeys to track yourself and the world be fantastic adventures, showing you how inextricably intertwined you truly are!