Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

Stories are attention

August 15th, 2024  |  Season 4  |  11 mins 28 secs

40 days and 40 nights, adventure, boyd varty, buffalo, londolozi, story hunter, storytelling, tracking, tree house, wild stories

How it looked to Amber - Stories are attention. If the truth is stranger than fiction, then the art of storytelling is not to make something up, but rather to really see what is there. Reality, if you look close enough, is almost always hilarious.

Expedition 3 - Shadow Tracking

July 1st, 2020  |  Season 2  |  11 mins 31 secs

lion, narcissistic, shadow, tracking

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.

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 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 25 - Sidetracked

April 26th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  10 mins 43 secs

ancestors, camp life, elephant bull, elephants, feral, friends, kettle shower, leopards, mating leopards, parfuri, presence, stars, tracking, whales

My quest to track a big bull elephant has still not happened. It keeps getting interrupted by lion tracks and pegasus rhino. Still this is a mission that remains high on my priority list. An animal like that has presence who has walked the ancient paths of his ancestors. There are myths of elephants who used to frequent the eastern seaboards of Southern Africa and commune with whales. These animals exist in a conscious that is beyond the verbal mind. There is no future and no past.

Day 24 - Pegasus

April 25th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 8 secs

aware, mission, pegasus, present, purpose, retreats, rhino, st frances, tracking

Losing tracks is part of tracking. Losing yourself is part of life. I consoled myself with knowing that some of Londolozi’s elite trackers lose the tracks from time to time. St Frances said wherever you go preach the gospel but only where absolutely necessary use words.

Day 23 - Spirit of Spirit

April 24th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  12 mins 35 secs

africa, caprivi, chief seattle, chobe, innocent ngwenya, kruger, lions, mana, okovango, serengeti, spirit, tracker academy, tracking, ubuntu

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 19 - Track Awareness

April 20th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  11 mins 19 secs

ant bear, body compass, career, david rattray, david whyte, martha beck, shaman, track awareness, tracking, wet

There are worlds are information in our worlds that we don’t even know about. As I was walking past the ant bear hole a miraculous thing happened. A honeyguide came and invited me on an adventure. The bird hovered near me chattering with intense excitement. I was deeply moved by the collaboration between man and nature. I stood alone really feeling it, my own ties to the hunter gatherers. Unfortunately it was late and I could not go with the bird.