Point last seen

After leaving an abusive marriage and losing her children to their father, Hannah Nyala began teaching herself to track in the Mojave Desert, seeking both physical safety and spiritual footing. Her skill grew until she joined a National Park Service search-and-rescue team. Yet she is also someone who could be followed. For Nyala, reading a print in the grass beneath a bedroom window is a question of staying alive.

Nyala describes rescue missions in which lives hang in the balance, and she questions the thrill-seeking style that often shapes how people search for the lost. Her study of tracking, both its practical mechanics and the meanings different cultures give it, draws on memories of growing up in rural Mississippi. It also takes her to the Kalahari, where she learns from the Ju/'hoan and !Kung San trackers.

Through her absorption in the craft and science of tracking, Nyala finds a place where she and her children can finally feel safe. The book offers a personal life story along with a close look at what it means to follow footprints.