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

The personal collective

Boyd Varty — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 14:00:00 +0200

If you have begun the journey of becoming a Story Hunter, you have become a character who finds characters, switched on your attention, learnt to see with the right kind of eyes, become someone who can create context. You are now ready to touch the core of what makes the story elevated. I call it the personal collective.

There is a strangely universal truth that the more in touch you are with your own unique personal essence, the more what you have to say becomes universally meaningful. The most private things are the most universal things.

Any type of trying to be commercially successful or thinking about the end user while you work will kill an artist's freedom. Yet if you are a storyteller, you want the story to be listener friendly. I always think about how a listener could put their own story into my stories. This is not a rule but rather an orientation. Like a compass, I point personal story towards a subtextual, universal story. A story always has an archetypal core.

Mentioned in this episode

Londolozi - https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/
Learn more about the Tsalala pride at Londolozi - https://blog.londolozi.com/2021/12/07/the-legacy-of-the-tsalala-pride/

Timestamps

(3.30) The Tsalala pride
(06:43) Universal energies
(08:42) Living with severe depression and anxiety

Resources:

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Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course.
Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat.

Discover Boyd's books:
https://boydvarty.com/book/

Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi

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Day 36 - Never Punch a Monkey

Boyd Varty — Thu, 07 May 2020 02:00:00 +0200

In the silence by the fire I suddenly heard growling. It was so constant I thought it was a generator on the breeze. It was the sounds of cats mating but without the specific sound that leopards make at the end of copulation. Lions mating.

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.

As I do this I become aware of how distracted I was before. This kind of empty fire sitting is a way of being with your own being. Afterwards I went up to the tree and the branches were shadowed on the tree.

I have been reading Bourdain’s books. Little did Bourdain and I know what lay ahead of us that night. At 2am I was awakened by something landing on the deck. A flat thump then a spray starting hitting my face and I got out of bed shouting.

You never know when you will get pissed on by a monkey.

The things you worry about never happen, it’s the things you never thought about that actually happen.

Finally when dawn broke I made a cup of tea and got on the trail of following the mating lions which went on for ages. I lost the tracks but kept persisting until I found their tracks crossing the border eventually.

Technically Im entering a phase now of this ceremony which you might think of as dismount. I need to integrate the ceremony and make sense of it to share with the world.

Connect with Boyd Varty:
Website | https://boydvarty.com/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/
Twitter | https://twitter.com/BoydVarty

Day 23 - Spirit of Spirit

Boyd Varty — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0200

Fresh tracks of a pride of lions in the predawn light behind the camp. Its been strangely cool, almost like a cold winter has been knocking on the door. Tracks cut down into the river and onto a beautiful sandbank. The sand allows you to see very clearly how the pride plays with each other. The tracks then cut up onto a hippo path. I’m nervous to follow but do so anyway.

The path opens into a small beach near the rivers edge. The cats pace from side to side not wanting to go in. With the water so brown and many crocodiles I try to find a better crossing point. Eventually I find my way across and move up river. Its think and grass and suddenly all the trees look similar. I find my tree and go down to the waters edge to beautiful pug marks of the tracks in the sand.

Why are these tracks beautiful? Its the perfect outline of this formidable predators large foot. Its the feeling that you are walking where the lions walk. Like you can almost feel the animals up ahead. It’s the spirit of the moment.

A short while later I find them, a lioness sitting in the golden morning light. My day is set, its 8:45am and I have find lions already.

I think of the Chief Seattle quote, when all the animals are gone humans will find a loneliness of spirit.

This is of a loneliness or bankruptcy of the spirit of life seems important. Have you ever walked into a soulless building - like a new mall. Well that at more subtle levels seem to be what we are losing and do not know that we are losing it. The very essence of family, community, work and play is losing its spirit.

I remember walking in a wilderness that had lost its animals in a war. It was strangely eerie.

How do we get back to the spirit of life?

Ubuntu - I am because of you, you are because of me.
Your presence helps me be a person.
It seems to run deeper than that. Deeper than people, the animals, plants, rivers.

Get quiet enough to really hear the voice inside you. Follow that and I suspect it will take you back instantly to the spirit of life.

Day 15 - Storming

Boyd Varty — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 13:00:00 +0200

If I thought I was getting into cruise mode, Day 15 took care of that. I was out of the camp early looking for tracks of lions which I followed. The confidence to make choices that stretch your flexibility
My body felt weak like it needed fuel. When the lions turned off the road the trouble began. I couldn’t get onto the line of their movement. The lions moved erratically, I moved erratically. Tracking is about rhythm and flow and there was none of that today.

Byron Katie says the only things that’s ever happening is what you are thinking and believing and I was definitely in a storm of thinking.
(https://thework.com/)

In truth I couldn’t find some tracks in a beautiful wilderness. I was lost but it wasn’t like life and death.
I was in old thoughts and judgements brought to this moment: “This is total waste of time. You’re no good at this.” I went from zero to irrationally judgmental fast.

My sister believes that certain existential crisis can be solved with a sandwich and a nap.

Wen tracking a few hours later and cut the track of two rhinos. They were huffing and puffing in a magic guar thicket. The wind was in my favor as they moved towards me. I climbed into the tree and sat quiet and still in the branches as they meandered below me blissfully unaware of my presence.
In these moments I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude. The game is so abundant after being protected all these years now.

Then the world fell on my head. At 11pm I sat bolt upright and smelt the storm on the breeze and felt it in my body. It was windy instinctual but I got up and erected the tarp. I’ve watched myself learn fast how to handle the rain. My body had a current of energy running through it, it was like I could feel the future. Then came the mother and father of a thunderstorm. The volume was turned up to holy shit!

I sat in a totally clean fear for four hours. I thought about the hymn ‘How Great Thou Art’.
I was truly scared as a grown man. It makes you feel so human to experience that fear.
It was so wet water was coming from underneath me.

Day 15, you showed me who is boss. That’s my report. I’m still afraid of dying and being burnt. This mystic has not put those puppies to bed, but I’m wilder for sure.

With thanks to Chris Rice for the Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc0QVWzCv9k

Connect with Boyd Varty:
Website | https://boydvarty.com/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/
Twitter | https://twitter.com/BoydVarty

Find out more about Londolozi
Website | https://www.londolozi.com/en/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/
Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi
Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Day 7 - Solo

Boyd Varty — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 10:30:00 +0200

Journal Entry: Discovered a perfect white fluff ball of feathers. My roommate, a chinspot basis. I got to bed to roost.
Living in a tree you don’t look up at birds, you are eye level.
African Hawk Eagles, Chinspot Batis, Tracks, Lions, Roost, Presence, Richard Siwela, Manyelethi

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.

I found a pride of lion in the Manyelethi.
Decoded the pattern of the tracks. Some young, some old. With young cub present I must be especially aware. The tracks had no night traffic. I began to follow. There is a unique feeling to following a pride of lions alone.

When tracking solo your tracking should be sufficiently good that you are not trying to track.
Now you are self reliant. If you encounter danger from the lions, the outcome will be dictated by the quality of your reactions. React slowly, do not run, do not panic. Condition yourself in advance for presence.

You are in a conversation that is communicated primarily with energy and body language. Stand your ground and then move backwards.
The general rule is to have respect and be humble.
The goal should be to see the lion before they see you.

I don’t know why I must follow but I want to follow. A tracker must follow as a form of self expression.
On a track alone, there can be a purity of self expression.

I think of my childhood hero, Richard Siwela. He was an incredible solo tracker. He was a leopard specialist. He was meticulous, judgmental and aloof by nature. He carried himself with the superiority of the superior.

Today I have been beaten by the boundary but I have enjoyed my art form.
The ability to let more life into my heart is surely a trail worth following.

Eugene Marais - Purposeful action towards an unknown purpose. Homing towards something towards their is no …..
Homing instinct in young pygmy boy.

Connect with Boyd Varty:
Website | https://boydvarty.com/
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/
Twitter | https://twitter.com/BoydVarty