“I don’t know where we’re going but I know exactly how to get there”
How do you find a lion? One track at a time. To find a particular animal within an area as vast as a safari might incline one to stay home and wait for a radio call - but to a tracker, with the mentality to dial the impossibly vast down to the first track - everything becomes possible.
I’ve been devouring all things Africa lately. If you look at our home, it’s like an African collectors show room. Woven baskets, African tribal flare, Capetonian landscape shots and the obligatory portrait of a lion - as if ruling the kingdom from its frame. Coming off the highs of a safari from a year ago, I’m constantly shaken awake by the lessons learned from time in the bush and I try to glance back to those days as I’m jostled in my normal daily routine. After the safari experience I tried my best to capture those feelings when I wrote about how a safari embodies the circle of life, but words remain elusive in the teachings.
Typically I try to avoid platitudinal books harping on finding yourself or self-improvement but when I was presented with a copy of Boyd Varty’s Lion Trackers Guide to Life, I knew it would resonate and was worth a deviation from a summer reading list of lighthearted page turners.
As I dog-eared the book, I clung to the words - enigmatically seeking to solve the mysteries of life gleaned from his deliberate time in nature.
"Most of us have so much of the social conditioning of modern life that the track of the wild self has been lost. We live with our attention directed outward. We focus on the social cues of our culture. we look to others to define our path and value and purpose. We lose ourselves in shoulds. Shoulds are full of traps - traps laid by society and your limited rules for yourself.” As a participant of western culture we can all appreciate these uttered words of distractions and societal pressures. I try to always stay true and proud of the fact that my path is different, unique to me and only me.”
Listening to our gut or body:
We as trackers need to track what makes us feel good and bring more of it into our life. Notice what makes you feel lousy and do less of it. Notice what feels hard but rewarding and do more of it. Amidst all of the information that surrounds us, learn to see what is deeply important to you. Use the feelings in your body as a guide. Live on first tracks.
“Anything that puts you into your essence, no matter how small, is valuable. Even if you don’t know where it’s going, play with it. Find friends to track with, lose the track, keep trying things, get feedback. Find your flow and remember to see how many unexpected things come into your life by living this way. It will be scary at times. Let the fear bring you to life. I suspect that if you give yourself the room to live each day as a tracker, a deep calling to serve will emerge. So my friend, as you read this, let this be a call to you. It’s time. Go track.”
We all know that feeling when we’re doing something in our life that just doesn’t feel right. It’s those moments that we need to answer our body and make the change.
“We must learn to read the subtle tracks of the body, the way it relaxes and opens when something feels right, the contraction and tightness when we are not where we are meant to be…Bringing attention back to the landscape of the body allows you to find the trail of the wild self.”
Laurelle said to me the other day - “I’m in need of a hike or some time in the mountains.” What she was looking for was perspective. She was looking for a reset, a whiff of new clues to ensure she’s on the right track.
“Nature doesn’t see status or wealth or social position. It cares only about presence, one’s ability to read the signs, navigate the terrain, and translate the language of the wilderness. Nature is the great equalizer.”
Wisdom and Mastery often look the same
The art of the tracker is that he can look at the thing he has seen a thousand times and always see something new.
“Renias has been out in the bush every morning of his life. He is fifty-five years old. And each day he looks at it anew and asks “Why?”
The misconception mindset:
As Boyd recalls the memory of his grandfather buying the Londolozi untended land: “As the ground went into shock, it sent up scrub, and slowly that scrub encroached on the grassland until it was so thick that nothing could move in it. When my family had first arrived, they had thought that this was simply the way the land was. If something is all you have ever known, you mistakenly believe that’s just how it is. Perhaps this is the greatest danger, that we don’t even recognize another way.”
This felt like the perfect piece to write on the 10 days of repentence ‘Aseret Yemei Teshuvah’ as we were leading up to Yom Kippur but it feels just as relevant as I sit here today, mid October, following the tracks and trying to remind myself to keep playing with them, questioning them and return to my core.
Great post