Ecotone: Collaborations With the Anonymous

Coyote Sings the Blues

I have learned that coyotes use railroad tracks as "green ways" to traverse their daily territories. From my bedroom at night, I could hear the coyotes up the hill where the railroad tracks cross Dry Hill Road, and when I walked on the tracks it was quite common to find their scat on the ties. In my mind's eye I saw these uncanny creatures, so common yet so invisible, trotting with purpose down steel rails glimmering in the moonlight, every so often stopping to sing out their wild communications. I found this graffiti on a freight train stopped on a remote section of track that cut through thick woods, just where I might expect to come upon a creature as wild and elusive as a coyote.