Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

Day 14 - Compass Not Culture

April 15th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  13 mins 18 secs

baboons, braiding sweet grass, carl jung, harmony, inner work, leopard

Harmony is when, by being yourself, you form part of the greater whole. A Shaman once told me that what we are trying to do as we live is balance our harmony with the intelligence of life. We stop trying to live well and we are lived. Our path and purpose comes through us by being who we most naturally are. And to look at any of the animals it just takes you there. I am in this tree to find my harmony.

Day 13 - Define Progress

April 14th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 15 secs

cultivate satisfaction, harry kirkman, ian player, luddite, premembering, renias, snakes, stars, technology

Have you ever had a memory of your future? Preremebering is an art form. It’s imagining out of a deep knowing what your life ought to be.
I’m interested what the future of human life could be and how we can create it.
We are poised for a great premembering.

Day 12 - Learning To See

April 13th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 53 secs

ceremony, giraffes, ken tinley, leopards mating, pride of lions, shaman, tracking, transformation, tree, truth

The trick to transformational processes is how to interrupt and shape patterns, in order to do this you must look at the spaces between things. How everything is touching everything else in relation.
A many called Ken Tinley once tuaght my father how to see a tree. There is a difference between how something works and what it means.

Day 11 - Paradise Lost

April 12th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 9 secs

dish towels, innocence, leopards mating, lourens van der post, mysterious, self conscious, shangaan village

Day 10 - Wayfinding

April 11th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 49 secs

butterflies, hudson valley, ian thomas, iron john, irwin, martial eagle, peter, polynesian, wayfinder, wild man

I am involved now in purposeful action towards an unknown purpose. Maybe there is an island out there. The Polynesian Wayfinders would sit on the front of a canoe and without any navigational tools would feel for an island of water. Homing. Ultimately you must captain your own canoe towards it intuitively must be.

Day 9 - Jurassic Park

April 10th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  13 mins 8 secs

franciscan, mystic, rhino, sweet potato, unicorn

We have forgotten how to live. Your phone is not making your life more convenient. Delete Netflix. Stop watching the news. Turn off your wifi. Go to places where there is no power. Focus on nature and community. Have ceremonies. Explore. Induce reverence for life. Find the others who really want to live. Don’t fight the system, just abandon it.

Day 8 - Thank God for the Spade

April 9th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  9 mins 2 secs

bull, elephant, frog, grasshopper, heat, hyena, spade, storm

Day 8 - Thank God for the Spade

My troubles all began with a frog. Actually it started when a grasshopper head butted me whilst using the toilet. I understand why people who live close to the earth belief in the changing moods of nature.

The elephant cow was unnerved by me, but I saw that she had run into a musty bull which was causing her agitation. At the last minute they crashed down the river bank instead of into me.

The temperature rose so much that it felt like I was at the devil’s for a barbecue. Then the wind came up and the temperature went from devil’s barbecue to Narnia within 6 hours. I felt like I was at sea in a storm.

Day 7 - Solo

April 8th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  14 mins 21 secs

african hawk eagles, chinspot batis, lions, manyelethi, presence, richard siwela, roost, tracks

Why am I Here?
Why have I always known I would live in a tree?
Why do I track solo?
Why do you know you must do that you have not rational reason to?
Out here I do one thing at a time. If you are into being present, I would give it a try.

Day 6 - Myth Making Tree Trickster

April 7th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 28 secs

crocodile, lalela, lawrence van der post, man, myth, tracker, wildebeest

Let me tell you an ancient story I just made up. Try and listen with the wild part of you. Listen close and push your rational mind away, a myth is a lie about the truth.
This is a myth about Lalela, the Wildebeest and the Man.

Day 5 - Why is Simplicity So Complicated?

April 6th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 50 secs

ngorongoro, presence, robinson crusoe, simplify, stillness, wildebeest

So many people feel like they are living their life behind a pain of perspex. I’m certain this is related to complexity and convenience. If you want more life: simplify, simplify, simplify. All over Africa where there tends to be less stuff I feel more generosity. The stillness is however confronting. Without the news of the world insights arise. Somewhere inside I’m still trying to grow up and overcome the ten year old.

Day 4 - Safety Third

April 5th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  14 mins 15 secs

buffalo, bushbuck, camp life, elephant, giraffe, mind of god, monkey, nyala, rhino, running, safety

Today I will run through the bush like people have always done. There are tricks to running in the African bush.
Its good to run when its how and animals are less active. There are three phases to being safe when running in the wilderness. Phase 1: Mindset and awareness you live in that is forward thinking, route planning, route assessment, knowing the terrain, local knowledge. Phase 2: How you handle the dangerous situation. Phase 3: The safety itself as a result of the first two phases.

Day 3 - Watch Out For The Small Things

April 4th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 37 secs

buffalo, camp, caterpillar, mike boon, rhino, zambezi

Boyd enters day 3 hot on the tracks of a rhino to try and find them. He details how he is arriving with humility to the greater rhythms of nature and developing an intimacy with his family place. Then things go south...