The coyote teacher
Tom Brown Jr.
b. 1950
The boy who found a fossil and a grandfather on the same riverbank, and spent a life handing the fire on.
At eight he began to learn tracking and hunting from Stalking Wolf in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
The Tracker School grew from that fire.
He calls himself a coyote teacher: he will not hand you the answer.
He will send you to the place where the answer still lives.
Inner vision, the caretaker, thirst as ally, the spirit that moves through all things — these are Grandfather’s, walking in a modern body.
The land around the school became a garden again because students remembered they were not visitors.
On the shelf
In the library
Tom Brown Jr.
I am a coyote teacher
To give instruction would satisfy the needs of most people, but that is not my goal. My goal is to give the reader a picture of the world we live in, the forgotten world. This book explains that it is not easily come by and a search for the truths must occur before knowledge is attained. Grandfather’s life was full of every emotion, every feeling, and they did not come from listening to his elders. He had to seek them out for himself as I wish the reader to do. I am a coyote teacher. The fire still burns. Someday people will seek again the old ways.
Grandfather
Tom Brown Jr.
Thirst is an ally
Thirst is an ally, not an adversary. Once accepted, heat and thirst lose their power, for they become a constant part of existence here. Without them there could be no living entity called desert. He had nearly died in the desert, but only the alien had died, only to be reborn as a child of this land. Thirst thus becomes the doorway through which we can see into the heart of the deserts, and more important see into the heart of ourselves. He did feel them. He did not fear or fight them, for they were part of the realities of life.
Grandfather