Scat Books -

A good scat book does three profound things:

Today’s scat books often include QR codes linking to audio of animal calls or apps for reporting sightings. They have also merged with conservation biology . For example, guides specific to the Pacific Northwest teach you how to distinguish the scat of a threatened Spotted Owl (via pellet analysis) from that of a Barred Owl. scat books

And sometimes, that alphabet is spelled with an ‘S’. A good scat book does three profound things:

Collectors of natural history art sometimes hunt down out-of-print scat guides for the illustrations alone. Early 20th-century pamphlets from the U.S. Forest Service depicted scat with a hand-drawn whimsy that feels both scientific and folkloric. You realize that drawing a perfect rendering of a bobcat’s segmented, blunt-ended scat is a form of nature writing without words. In the last decade, the scat book has evolved. It has gone digital, but the analog versions persist for a reason: you cannot get Wi-Fi in a deep ravine. And sometimes, that alphabet is spelled with an ‘S’

Furthermore, there is a strange humility in it. Our culture is obsessed with the beautiful, the clean, the sanitized. A scat book forces you to kneel down in the dirt, to look closely at what we usually step over or avoid. It says: Everything in nature is useful. Nothing is truly waste. The story is always there, even in the most humble pile. If you want to dip your toe into this weird, wonderful world, start with Scats and Tracks of North America by James Halfpenny. It’s small, waterproof, and fits in a pocket. Take it on your next hike.

You won’t always get an answer. But the act of asking—the act of reading the forest’s cryptic library—is a kind of prayer. And the scat book is your prayer book.