Track Your Life with Boyd Varty - Episodes Tagged with “Lion”

Expedition 3 - Shadow Tracking

Boyd Varty — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 15:00:00 +0200

Journal entry.

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.

I was not planning on tracking but this is life in the wild. This is life as a tracker you must let yourself create with the moment.
It’s a large pride and to a tracker this magnetism is too strong.
I walk a half circle around where they lay to find the direction they set off on …… quickly I am onto their trail as they head into a deep thicket.
Through the night a herd of elephants have moved through the area covering over many of the tracks.

Then a herd of zebras followed the elephants cutting the hard ground on top of where lions padded past.
Quickly the majority of the tracks are gone.
This can be very common in tracking. You can go from this is going to be easy to this is impossible in a few steps. Like life. Like any time you set out on a new path.

Now I must follow as a shadow tracker…..to follow these lions I must become a student of vagaries, a follower of faint impulses and weak imprints…..i must drift through the terrain every reactive… ever alert…..moving on invisible lines that those tawny creators may have taken through the thick terrain. Anticipating

If I want to see each track or be sure I'm on their trail I will make myself crazy.
Here quite suddenly the need for certainty is an impediment.

The shadow trackers energy is that of drifting….as if in a world between worlds…..noticing…..moving with attention…..but with the world in a soft focus around you.
Somehow letting go of thinking about how lions move and being empty enough to move like a lion.
It is a lost kind of attention in modern life.
It’s the skill of riding a tide like a jellyfish.
Or catching a thermal like a migrating bird……it’s the skill of being in the right place to be shown and taken.

I tell you this now awakeners because that unexpected lion trail was teaching me how to follow the trail of my own shadow.
The shadow is the part of you that has never been allowed. It's your dark twin, a narcissistic, bad, even evil part of you that got stuffed away so you could belong.

It's your most unsocialized primal desires. There is biting and talking without asking.
It’s the back side of years of being good to get a cookie.

But your shadow denied will run parts of you with unconscious force until you can meet it as a friend. I say this now cause we are in the time of shadow….and we must work in ourselves to work in the world.
Your shadow given a seat at the fire becomes more self….. strong boundaries, unfuckwithable personal power. a person with a well integrated shadow is not interested in being nice or liked they are interested in being true.
There is a grace to a person who has found the dark in themselves. A compassion that can look at a tyrant or a weakling and know that is in me too. But strangely a person who has met their shadow stands up to tyrants and is able to ask for help where they are weak

Shadow tracking… is for if you want to get to know yourself more deeply.
It will liberate so much primal energy if you get to know that dark part of yourself.
To find the shadow you must give up certainty and need to know it and drift with an open awareness.

Notice the people who make you most mad and uncomfortable. They are holding your shadow.
Pay attention to your restments.
See what you fantasise about.
Notice where you are compulsive.

That which we repress bursts out at strange times or runs our lives without us knowing.

Do not try to understand the shadow. Do not try to identify it outright. Not like a shadow tracker drift in the half land where it lives. Become aware of it.

Ask yourself……that person I can't bear why ?……they are narcissistic, loud, self centred. What are they holding so you don’t have to.

That’s the part of you that is repressed.
Ask that resentment…… resentment what are you asking for?
Rage what do you want. ?
Disgust what you need?
Let the answers be truly uncensored and ugly.

As you drift towards the guarded outlines of your shadow with this soft eyed attention you will find themes.
You may be annoyed at someone who always puts themselves first cause you never do. Until you explode and leave so you can do what you want.
You will get to know what your anger is asking for.
You will come to understand how your patheticness is a place where you couldn’t get the help you needed so you acted like you never needed anything.

Oh shadow tracking is not an exact science it’s a kind of background attention on actions and intentions and thoughts and reactions.

Maybe you just had a conversations with your boss….or your partner…….you find yourself after the account running an enraged conversation in your head with them…..about how they don’t fucking get it.
Ask that voice what it needs, what it wants, why it's mad…..that's shadow tracking.
Your shadow integrated becomes more presence in which you can show up with no need to be liked. It’s a power through self knowledge and understanding of the truth of you.
It’s the part of you that tells someone clearly what they are not getting in the moment with no fear.

Work is the shadow is to balance yourself in real goodness. The awareness of what lives in you and the choice in how to consciously be with that all.

I exit the thick terraine after about thirty minutes of shadow tracking…..below me is a dry river bed where thick riversand covers the ground….i use the sand to cut back onto the tracks….the entire pride crossing the dry water course and suddenly I am back on their trail with absolute clarity. Now I follow the imprint of toes and lobed pads across beautiful terrain.
I follow at pace the energy of the shadow tracker is gone. I move with purpose and clarity.
Alone for miles in any direction.
In the beautiful clear light of the morning.
In a ravine I hear the lions growling. These are the sounds of feeding. The lions have killed a kudu
The pride feeds with brutal intensity. Biting and clawing at each other as they ingest chunks of bloody meat. I watch through binoculars from a distance the savagery of the feeding each man must fight for its place at the kill.
After they feed quit suddenly all aggression is gone. They lie around and groom each other with gentle care totally in tune with the full range of being a lion.

Every day the wild is my teacher.
It takes me on adventures. It takes me inward.

Slowly I walk back to my land rover watching my shadow beside me

4-0 out.

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Notes on Reentry

Boyd Varty — Fri, 15 May 2020 14:00:00 +0200

Notes on Re-entry

Bedrooms are strange. I look at the thatch roof with gratitude and a touch of contempt. Before I get to that I would like to tell you something that happened on the last evening. I was on a crest, the land fell away and 3 rhino we feeding in a clearing. It was beautifully serene and I felt so still. I was ready to leave the tree. Far away from me a lion roared and I had to go and look.

Quickly the clearing gave way to a sandveld bush. I let myself stop thinking about where that lion may be and let my body go where it wanted. Purposeful action towards and unknown purpose. The lion was my purpose. Purposeful navigation towards and unknown destination. I don’t know where I’m going but I know exactly how to get there.

It takes so doing to walk in a straight Line through a thicket but it takes some doing. One quickly gets subtly off course. Eventually the bush gave way ti riverine vegetation. A little bit before sunset I suddenly broke out of the thicket. IN front of me was a thickly reeded marsh that gave way to golden grassland. My body stopped and my mind felt incredibly quiet. Something inside of me said this is the place. For a time there was nothing but stillness. I thought I had gone mad but then across the reed bed a dark maned lion rose across the golden grass.

I was taken by joy, the presence. For six weeks in the tree everything I was searching for was there in a moment. The mystic, the tracker, the lion and me.

I tell you this because everything is astoundingly different. It’s really hard to describe how to walk back into your life with more awareness.

Lockdown is a state of mind.

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.

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Day 38 - Push

Boyd Varty — Sat, 09 May 2020 02:45:00 +0200

If you think 6 weeks is long you should try two days. The moon rises here have been truly epic. Last night as it rose a small pearl spotted owl was perched on a Marula tree silhouetted for a moment. An astounding truth that the moon controls the tides and fertility in its cycle. The night was so bright I didn’t even need a torch.

You know you are so hungry when everything looks like food. A huge pancake, a wheel of French cheese and a ripe peach. It’s not that I’m tired but rather how you would feel at the end of a long experience. It’s a head space. I really want to shower, I really want to talk to my friends. Drink pints at the taps and get cut mercilessly before they turn on each other.

It’s the things that play on your mind like warm anticipation. You can’t do that early on as it would just derail your whole sense of presence. It makes me think of Renias and how any tracker worth his salt is just wired this way.

On a prior retreat the tracks had been tricky but were fresh. Part of the art of guiding is being able to read where people are and know where to push and when to let them go. Renias, however couldn’t leave the tracks. It offended something in his nature to let the lion tracks go.

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.

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Day 32 - Being Elephant

Boyd Varty — Sun, 03 May 2020 09:15:00 +0200

The days are shortening and there is a distinct chill on the air when I open my eyes onto the branches of trees in the morning. I feel saturated with natural beauty. Winter is the time my ancestors used to come to this land back in the hunting days. It is the time when many tribes would sweep off the escarpment.

I cross the river just after dawn moving on instinct to where I though the sound of the lions roaring is. I would need time to crack this code as the tracks go in all direction. But up on the crest of the clearing, impala are alarming. Then a lion roars. I walk up to Ximpalapala koppie and then see a big black maned lion up on the hillside. The plains below them are full of zebra and wildebeest.

In front of me steam is billowing out of a chimney spout like breath on the morning air. Underground the work of thousands of termite is causing the termite mound to release energy and heat.

Every elephant’s foot is cracked like a fingerprint. But it’s too difficult in a mess of tracks. The key with elephants right now is freshness. If you get onto a bull and the tracks are less than an hour or two old and you may have a chance. Sometimes I just speculate on a direction, full of doubt but going for it nonetheless. Today I am right, a bull feeds in the clearing on a termite mound. He walks through the ground and then lopes through the grass. He feeds almost continuously, sleeps standing during midday in the shade.

He will live to about sixty, chew his way through multiple sets of teeth, cover thousands of miles, pollenate plants, cause awe and fear and still there is a different between what something does and what it means. What an elephant’s presence means in our world is utterly impossible to say.

In the late afternoon another herd comes through camp, close to the fire pit. It’s like they expect me here. Two young bulls wrestle with each other. I walk out with my cup of tea in my hand, they look at me and move forward but with no intent.

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.

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Day 18 - Golden

Boyd Varty — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0200

Day 18 - Golden

People have a saying in South Africa, we are looking golden. Well if this experience has its own ebbs of fortune, emotionality and joy then we are looking golden.

The lions have returned to Londolozi and I could see the tracks of the pride heading further west into the bush. They cut off the road and I scratched around a bit on their line o movement. The light was beautiful and the smell of a fresh morning was invigorating. I was feeling totally in tune with their movement.

Tracking in these moments is a beautiful combination of skill, concentrations and even somatic intelligence as your body feels the terrain.

I though of that tracking saying “I don’t know where I’m going but I know how to get there.:

Here on this beautiful morning I am trying to keep this dying art form alive inside of myself. What a strange thing, an art that does not live on a wall, an art that lives inside a person. If you keep tracking alive you keep a thread to a way we used to be, to another time.

The track cut further north and I’m flying along now in total flow. No trying, no mind just flow state.
I come across the land manager who is following a male leopard in his vehicle. I see his vehicle through the bushes and crouch down in the long grass and watch them go by me no more than 20 meters away. They do not notice me and when they are gone I continue on the tracks of the lions.

The lions cut through a dry water course. Two other guides arrive by chance and are also looking for lions. They want to join the tracking. The 3 of us set off and only 60 meters later we hear a squirrel alarm. James behind me starts to click. My eyes come up off the ground and there is a big male lion and a lioness looking at us. Gold cats in golden lights….Golden. The male snarls without any real intention and we move back. The rest of the pride is in the long grass all around them. There is something so satisfying about finding something in a huge wilderness using just your skills.

I had been waiting for this morning of tracking. What else do I feel? What do you want from life? What is life asking of you? What would you hear if you listened? It Is 7:30 am and I have lived the aliveness of 10 years. More presence is more life. Not doing more. Something so tangible.

I would like to write a book called the dynamics of satisfaction. Scene of man in the wild making himself water to bathe with.

I’m also aware of how I have objectified myself. We think of ourselves as an object on a scale. We should be much further ahead or I’m not where I should be. I’m talking about a continuous comparative dynamic that is structured into a culture where everything is automated and commodities until your own psyche makes you a thing and judges that thing comparatively. Just think about how you drive yourself when you are exhausted. Just watch what you do to yourself when you start duding yourself.

Inside that mind all the dimension of person gives way to something terribly binary. Good bad, failing winning or losing.

All I want you to know from me out here is that it is not you. It is structured into the psyche in the modern life.

Buffalo Story

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