Book Review: "The Tracker" by Tom Brown Jr.

In 1978, a “Reader’s Digest” condensed book section featured Tom Brown Jr’s, action-packed autobiography, The Tracker. I bought a copy[1] and thoroughly enjoyed it both then and in a recent re-read. The book, as told to science-fiction author, William Jon Watkins, recounts the journey of a boy as he and his best friend learn the skills of outdoor survival under the tutelage of an old Native American scout. The story takes Brown from age seven through eighteen in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and concludes with a sketch of him as a grown man facing the rigors of the Dakota badlands, the Grand Canyon, the Tetons and Death Valley. Although there are those on the internet who doubt the accuracy of some of his accounts, there is no question that Tom Brown Jr. is, indeed, a tracking authority. He has even been interviewed concerning survival skills on national television.

My enjoyment of this book, as with most books I read in non-Christian and secular categories, has especially to do with the author’s observations, not his conclusions. The category into which I would place this book is Native American religious thought. He has a premise: the “...world view in which Nature is a being larger than the sum of all creatures and can be seen best in the flow of its interactions.”[2] The premise is woven throughout the narrative. Beyond that, the depth of Brown’s immersion in this world view is seen in the Trackers’ School he founded, which is heavily weighted as a philosophical study.

When I read a book of this kind I look for four things.

First, I look for valid and creative observations about a subject (such as nature and even life). For example: Brown’s observation concerning fear can bring a fresh appreciation of that phenomenon when he writes, in the context of a terrifying situation in the wilderness, “It’s always in the imagination that fear makes its easiest bed.”[3]

Second, I look for exposure to human behavior which can elude us in areas where do not or cannot do field work. Brown’s description of a period of depression after the loss of his best friend[4] is profound; and his description of the impact of depression on perception is stunning:

If I had been more alert, if I had not shut myself off from the flow of nature, I would have known something was wrong in the woods. If I had not allowed myself to be blinded by my grief, I would have noticed earlier the small signs of the poachers’ passage.[5]

Third, I look for analogies such as his last chapter which describes an arduous search for a lost man with the mental limits of a five-year-old. The account has forever enhanced my appreciation for the statement that Jesus came to "seek and to save that which was lost." I would heartily recommend that chapter for an evangelism class as a paradigmatic study of informed and controlled intensity.

Finally, specifically in the case of this book, I look for insights into the thinking of the “new” forms of Native American world views which are asserting themselves and finding their way into home entertainment such as Free Willy and Dolphin's Tale, to mention a couple of the more innocuous examples. The “spirit-that-moves-in-all-things” may well be a handle that could be grasped to recommend a turn to the one “in whom we live and move and have our being,” who provides that which is not to be found in the religions of man – an explainable redemption which brings forgiveness of sins and hope to those who will receive Jesus Christ.

[1] Brown, Tom Jr. as told to William Jon Watkins, The Tracker. Berkley Books, Paperback. 1978. 229pp.

[2] p. 14

[3] p. 14

[4] pp 161 ff.

[5] p. 165