Boy, that was fun.
I’m just getting back from a search and rescue exercise (SAREX) that I participated in as a prospective member of the Search and Rescue Tracking Institute (SARTI).
Having operated as a flanker on a canine search team during the previous two years, I decided to take a look at another avenue of interest I’ve had for a while but haven’t had the opportunity to look further into: tracking.
I learned about SARTI at the Virginia SAR Conference I attended a few weeks ago and decided to take advantage of their upcoming training session to become better educated on the subject.
Tracking is the ancient art of finding a track, whether it be a human or non-human, and be able to not only identify it but also follow it.
(There is probably a better definition, and if I find one I’ll fix this, but this is what I’ve got off the top of my head.)
So imagine you’re walking down the side of the road, across a park, or maybe around your yard.
Every step you make is leaving a trace that you were there.
Trackers can detect those traces and make sense out of that data.
I’ve now seen trackers work twice and it is amazing to me.
At first you don’t see anything.
Then they will point out the smallest detail: a broken twig, several rocks pushed up, or, the obvious, a shoe print.
That is the start of what becomes the slowest adventure ever.
A path starts to form and clues materialize.
You now have data that can be used to rule out or confirm other clues that are found by other teams and narrow down the areas that need to be searched.
I attended the Virginia SAR Conference in Appomatox, Virginia this year and had a blast!
The primary reason I attended the conference was to attend the Lost Person Behavior class, taught by Bob Koester himself, along with the companion Train the Trainer class, which allows me to teach the class …