Roaring Plains

 In this newly designated wilderness region just south of Dolly Sods in West Virginia, the trails are not blazed with the colored squares bolted on selected trees or well trodden "highways".  To the untrained eye, there were no trails aside from some random ribbon tied to branches.  We became adept at looking for scuff marks on roots, broken branches, and grooves in the topsoil.  At first frustrating, then quite intriguing to think how quickly we could adapt our focus to those subtleties in just a few days, and to think that trackers or foragers of yesteryear had years to learn and study the lay of the land.  Is it a lost art form?