Boyd Varty
Host of Track Your Life with Boyd Varty
Having spent his life in apprenticeship to the natural world, he now works to bring what he’s learned to a wide audience. Boyd’s unique combination of wisdom, humour and spirituality makes him a captivating speaker. He keeps diverse audiences in rapt attention and gales of laughter and leaves them moved.
The wildlife and literacy activist Boyd Varty, author of the memoir Cathedral of the Wild, had an unconventional upbringing. Born to a family of conservationists, Boyd grew up on Londolozi Game Reserve in the South African wilderness, a place where man and nature strive for balance, where perils exist alongside wonders. Founded more than 90 years ago as a hunting ground, Londolozi was transformed into a nature reserve beginning in 1973 by Varty’s father and uncle, visionaries of the restoration movement. But it wasn’t just a sanctuary for the animals; it was also a place for ravaged land to flourish again and for the human spirit to be restored. When Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years of imprisonment, he came to the reserve to recover.
Since childhood, Boyd shared his home with lions, leopards, snakes, and elephants and has spent his life in apprenticeship to the wisdom of nature. Boyd survived a harrowing black mamba encounter, a debilitating bout with malaria, even a vicious crocodile attack, but his biggest challenge was a personal crisis of purpose. As a university student, he studied psychology and ecology, supplementing his education by learning martial arts in Thailand, hiking through the jungles of the Amazon, and apprenticing to a renowned tracker from the Shangaan tribe deepening his intimate knowledge of the natural world. Boyd grew up speaking the local language and learning the true meaning of coexistence between people and with nature.
Boyd Varty has hosted 61 Episodes.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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Day 2 - A Somewhat Anxious Ape
April 3rd, 2020 | Season 1 | 21 mins 37 secs
anxiety, baboon, hyena, thich nhat hanh, treehouse
Boyd enters Day 2 of his 40 Day, 40 Night immersion and talks about everything from hyenas arriving at camp to the emergence of anxiety, Thich Nhat Hanh's books on Fear and understanding how the Bhudda beset by demons under the groves may just have been a mind not allowed to rest in itself.
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Day 1
April 2nd, 2020 | Season 1 | 21 mins 4 secs
africa, boyd, londolozi, mystics, preparation, tracker, varty
Day 1 from the Treehouse is now live
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40 Days & 40 Nights Preparation
March 29th, 2020 | Season 1 | 18 mins 28 secs
africa, books, boyd, londolozi, mystics, preparation, tracker, varty
Boyd begins preparing for his immersion into the wilderness, discusses books he is planning on taking out with him and reflects on the impact of the weather.