Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

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.

Day 38 - Push

May 9th, 2020 | Season 1 | 9 mins 54 secs

alex, food, lion, moon, presence, push, renias, retreats, tracking

A few days ago I left the trail of the lion when the sun climbed high in the sky and the light grew flat and white. I needed to go back on the track and be certain the trail was lost over the border which it was. Courage is knowing when the hold on and knowing when to let go. I need to be here all the way until the end.

Day 37 - The Two Paths

May 8th, 2020 | Season 1 | 12 mins 19 secs

alex, carl jung, community, joseph campbell, left path, mentee, mentor, mythology, renias, right path, tracking, twin, wild

Jung had this idea of there being two paths. The right path and the left path. The right path is the one of society. A structured path forward that is laid outside and with its pursuit comes a position in the world with pursuit and structure. The right path is beautiful. The left path is different. It is the path of creation. You look into the world and you don’t see anything that is for you. It’s like living towards a feeling of aliveness. It requires a lot of reaching for the wild twin. Joseph Campbell says of the left path, it’s a challenge because you will not be respected by society by you will be in our own authenticity.

Day 36 - Never Punch a Monkey

May 7th, 2020 | Season 1 | 11 mins 31 secs

anthony bourdain, lions, mating, monkey, scops owl, tracking, tracks, urine

In line with my family tradition I walked in the moonlight down the road to the camp. The moon was so bright I cast a shadow. I knew if the lions were mating I only need wait a bit and I would hear them again. I stood in silence listening to the Scops owls call all around. Then the sound again. I moved fast towards the lions as I knew they would not hear me. Then I saw them. The air was very cool and the cats stood and began to walk away from me on a hippo path towards the river. Watching them in the night and to be alone was something astonishingly private. No one would every understand how close I felt to them that night. I went back to the fire and just sat there for sometime.

Day 35 - Enchantment

May 6th, 2020 | Season 1 | 12 mins 13 secs

acceptance, bateleur, beauty, eckhart tolle, enchantment, enthusiasm, fasting, harmony, homework, mission, mystics, presence, stillness, tune in

I think of this experience as the slow removal as a shell. As the days went by I felt more myself. I felt the creativity coming back in, co-creating the story with nature. My energy levels return to new highs. My relationship with beauty was revived. I feel like so much of what I was trying to do before was trying to tune out, now I am trying to tune back in.

Day 34 - So Many More Elephants

May 5th, 2020 | Season 1 | 11 mins 54 secs

assumption, danger, firefly, heat, irwin, kudu, rhino, tortoise, vultures, water

There were many elephants which required a certain type of bushcraft. What had meant to be a stroll through open clearings had turned into a tactical maneuver. In the outdoors dangerous situations often happen long before the danger. They happen through unexpected sliding variables. Assumptions you had made no longer fit the moment. Experience in some ways is the ability to arrest the preconceived ideas and assumptions to make new decisions out of those assumptions.

Day 33 - Sinking In

May 4th, 2020 | Season 1 | 9 mins 46 secs

decentralized, ghandi, globalization, great heart, insurance, johnny clegg, nature, permaculture, river, run, sound, spirit

Ghandi was a huge believer in the village because he understood that in shared production of food you could produce enough to be free from colonial rules of survival. I don’t think small food gardens can be underestimated. And surely as markets continue to globalize in a world of radically accelerating uncertainty, you couldn’t do better than a back to basics insurance plan than small decentralized food gardens. Put the gardens at the center of your pocket of light.

Day 32 - Being Elephant

May 3rd, 2020 | Season 1 | 11 mins 57 secs

ancestors, being, elephant, fingerprint, lion, lion tracking, tea

In late January I tracked a small elephant bull with a group of close friends. We tracked the bull for a few hours, seeing his huge tracks and into the dry riverbed. At different times a different person tracked. Each of them acquainted themselves with the elephant. As each member of the group trailed that elephant we became harmonized in perfect unfolding. We feel into intimacy with the elephant and each other. Where he had rested in the shade so did we. As we followed we started to know each other. Whatever happened after that day, there was an elephant we knew. We found him at sunset and not a word was said.

Day 31 - Dialogue with Silence

May 2nd, 2020 | Season 1 | 10 mins 1 sec

compassion, currents, dialogue, elephants, friend, friendship, mountain, news, prayer, river

Each day I have sit in stillness with the absolute certainty I will die. The ones I love will leave me or I will leave them. I will not hide from that last veil to love. You can hurt me love or teach me the truth. Trust this life that made this river. Trust that I will find this river. Take me to those shores of grace I ask, I have so far to go and I am afraid of storms and loss. Take me to the peace that passeth. I don’t know the way but I sense it there from beyond the edges.

Day 30 - The First Track

May 1st, 2020 | Season 1 | 10 mins 15 secs

anthony bourdain, carl jung, chinese saying, circumambulation, instagram, jungle oats, scotch, trackers, venn diagram

Carl Jung had an idea of circumambulation where you exist in your fullest potential in your future self. You achieve this future self by paying attention to what truly grabs you with the feeling of aliveness now. You move towards and also around your future self. As you do this you will see patterns and themes about what is core and essential to yourself. If you look back over your life you will see that there are themes that continually emerge on your Venn diagram. You see all of this as you spiral through time towards your future potential.