Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

Expedition 5 - The Sacred Enemy

July 16th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  11 mins 30 secs

rhino, sacred enemy

Followed a rhino bull, but he led me in circles. I couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that a rhino was trying to shake me off his tail. To add to the confusion there were also tracks of a female rhino from the night before.

If the rhino was my nemesis then he was my sacred enemy. The difficulty he was providing was causing untold growth in my tracking ability.

Expedition 4 - Hyena Telepathy

July 8th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  9 mins 46 secs

hyena, leadwood forest, makomsava, resonance, sacred sites, telepathy

The best time to be in the leadwood forest is in the creamy light of a full moon.
All around the trees peg a scale of time beyond human comprehension to the earth.
It can be a strange thing to watch people from all over the world walk into the dappled light of the trees and fall silent.

In my days as a safari guide I would wait for the third or fourth day of a safari. I would wait for the hysteria to see animals to subside and then take people to the forest.
You see the forest can be experienced on many levels and I have come to believe that it will meet you where you are ….it will take you to the level of stillness, wildness or reverence that you have cultivated in yourself and then some. The deeper you are the deeper the magic of the forest.

Expedition 3 - Shadow Tracking

July 1st, 2020  |  Season 2  |  11 mins 31 secs

lion, narcissistic, shadow, tracking

Tracks of huge pride of lions cut off a beautiful white sandy road onto a game path.
Here the pride walks in single file laying a perfect trail.
The path opens into a small clearing next to the crusted mud of a dried up waterhole.
Next to a huge termite mound with a giant brown ivory growing out of it the tracks tell the story of a giant lion love ball. They have lain down here… lying up against each other…..cubs climbing on mothers heads and biting each other's ears. The flat grass and imprints of tails tell me that they slept here some time yesterday afternoon.
They probably moved as the sun went down so they have a whole night ahead of me.

Expedition 2 - Intuitive knowing

June 28th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  11 mins 16 secs

boyd varty, intuition, plaque rock, ptsd, ww2

Journal entry.
Intuitive is defined as: using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive
I think this is why I have always liked sacred sites because when you are at one “you are beyond conscious reasoning” you sense something in the air.
and I like it there because for me there has always been more life beyond conscious reasoning.
You only need to fall in love to understand the truth in that.
There are different ways of knowing.
On native medicine wheels there was always body, mind , heart , spirit.
It was understood the mind was only one way of relating to or experiencing life.

Expedition 1 - Symphony of Stillness

June 26th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  14 mins 27 secs

beer, bushbaby, memory, starlight, teenager, tingwe camp

Journal entry
It all begins with sketchy reports of a very rare black rhino that was seen in the far north of the reserve. I drive out with my gear motivated by some deep tracking lore…. If there is a rare animal out there I must go and look for it.
The inclination to seek out and find what is rare is fundamental to the tracker.

Expedition Delayed

June 22nd, 2020  |  Season 2  |  11 mins 15 secs

expedition, raining, religion

The original purpose of religion was to bring sacredness to life. Imagine a time (whether prehistorical or transhistorical) when human beings lived moment-to-moment in the presence of the sacred. Religion was unnecessary. There was no separation between spirituality and life, no distinction between the sacred and the mundane, no division of the Godly and the worldly. When we lost the ongoing and immediate sense of sacredness, then we needed religion to bring us back to it. "Religion," after all, means "that which renews our connection."

Sacred Sites Preparation Day

June 20th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  11 mins 16 secs

Intention

June 16th, 2020  |  Season 2  |  10 mins 56 secs

intention, sacred, sacred sites

In a setting with almost no connotation for me to the sacred.
The sacred is not just places but what happens in places.

I will start with what I can. I will work with the track I have.

Dispatches from the Boundary Walk

June 12th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 2 secs

boundary walk, londolozi, long walk

Notes on Reentry

May 15th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 22 secs

awareness, ceremony, decompression, home, integration, lion, lockdown, londolozi, south africa, tracking, uncertainty

The truth is we can’t really plan. We don’t know where this thing lands or ends. There is so much uncertainty as to how to proceed. The art of re-entry from what a tree teaches us is to go slowly.
Track moment to moment. Make everything in your day an event, mindfully tending to it.

Day 40 - Searching for the Spirit of the Great Heart

May 11th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  7 mins 1 sec

40 days, 40 nights, africa, johnny clegg, spirit of the great heart, tree

And then all of sudden we were there. The face of the people I love. Saying goodbye with immense gratitude to the tree and this beautiful place on the river. The last dawn from inside this experience on the river. I know this is not the end but the beginning. You will be hearing from me. There is so much life for us all to live. I’m not going to try and summarize of sign off well. I have said what I need to say. I will leave you with an anthem by the late great South Africa Johnny Clegg. Volume up, listen to the words.

Day 39 - Reflection

May 10th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 38 secs

anxiety, buddha, ceremony, connection, contemplation, cover, culture, eden, gratitude, jesus, londolozi, love story, mystic, nature, normal, peace, reflection, remember, tree

Covid has been so hard for so many people but it also gave me a glimpse back in time. This reserve has been an empty Eden and I am Adam. What will it mean in 30 years to have lived with wild animals? Will it all be gone or will be wake up? Would you find it very hard to understand if I said that I’m learning to be at peace with both? Wherever we land, it will be there.