Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Tracking the Kalahari lion is an intense experience of extreme endurance, grit and absolute commitment. Few environments cultivate extreme mindfulness like the desert. There is no margin for error here and I consider my own fragility. If you don’t yet know what that track is in your own life, you must discover it. In this final episode, I share some thoughts from what I have learnt, to help you on your path of discovery. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Timestamps 1:55: Kalahari tracking 3:45: Fragility in the wild 6:05: A lesson in commitment Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

There is a beautiful feeling to driving into the middle of nowhere, and frankly anywhere west of Hukunsi is the middle of nowhere. The land is vast and empty. White desert sand, tall camel thorn trees, rolling plains of dry grass, that just goes on and on and on. The temperature gauge on the vehicle gives a casual outside reading of 46 degrees at three in the afternoon. We bump along dirt roads into a wildlife concession roughly the size of Switzerland that not a single tourist visits. This land is not even game reserve, it's simply the Botswanan wild lands. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Learn more about the work of Kalahari Research and Conservation Botswana (https://www.krcbots.org/). Timestamps 3.57: Bushmen culture and lifestyle 5.33: The persistence hunt 11.12 - A remembering 13.51 Coming out of the portal Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

In this episode we embark on what feels like a masterclass in desert tracking. The first light of dawn hadn't yet cracked the horizon when I found myself breathless, feet sinking into the sands of the Kalahari, trying to match the pace of Kecao, Hamku, and Tamai, on the tracks of a cheetah. In this story, experience the rush of the intense pursuit, unmatched tracking skills and exhilarating enthusiasm. The vast landscape challenges every ounce of our stamina while we learn the language of the land. We sit in ceremony around the campfire - and learn about the cultural skills and knowledge that are still preserved. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Timestamps 1.22 On the tracks of a cheetah 7.44 Music, dancing and games 09:27 A prophetic story about a plane crash in the Kalahari Resources: **Online Courses: -Become a Story Hunter - Enroll in the online course. Uncover the track of your life through Boyd's online guided retreat - Track Your Life (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/). *Discover Boyd's books: (https://boydvarty.com/book/) * - The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life - Cathedral of the Wild Experience Africa. Immerse your senses and awaken your spirit on a Londolozi Safari (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) *Join the community: * Follow the journey - hit subscribe to Track your Life and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s mailing list (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more

We have begun our journey South. In Ghanzi we are warmly greeted by Anneli, who is a descendant of the Dorsland Trekkers, and can be described as the salt of the earth. She shares her knowledge with all the complexities and nuances that only a local can offer and offers a small window of insight into the complex interactions between traditional and modern ways of life in the Kalahari. I'm quickly learning that in this profoundly complicated world,, we often miss the multiple layers and complexity inside of every issue. Our first interactions with the Bushmen people are authentic - real and warm. I feel their energy and, as a tracker, I'm touched by the quality of wilderness literacy I'm seeing. They are deeply mindful about every way they interact with nature. It feels like we are in a time machine. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Timestamps (00:47- The Dorsland Trackers (02.13 - Anneline from Ghanzi (06:12 - Meeting and gathering with the Bushmen Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Is there something you know that lights you on fire, that somehow you keep falling asleep to? I am reminded that the wild has my heart. I reflect on how my work is, in some ways, to inhabit and remember wildness, in an ever more domestic world. I must not forget this secret art of my life - to be in tune with wilderness. Our organic plans to meet with the Bushmen people are coming together. I am ready and excited to learn from the Bushmen people - who are renowned trackers and people of the land. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Timestamps (05:22 - - 06:08) The intersection of energy of the trackers and the energy of the Shaman Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

At sunrise, we cut the tracks of a male lion. This episode follows our pursuit of this majestic animal through wild and dangerous terrain. Deep down, I feel my own hunter - a desire to compete and survive. I feel a million-year-old drive to find what I'm tracking. I feel how in the wild, there is no margin for error. A mistake out here can mean instant death. And this proximity to real death is paradoxically full of life. There is an intimacy to tracking. To walk in an animal's footsteps all day is to know that animal on a different level. And the beginning of a transformation and a deeper understanding of our own agency in the world. Tracking takes us on a journey of mastery and perseverance that challenges us to question the crafting of our experiences in the pursuit of what it means to truly be alive. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Timestamps (02:24) The alertness to lion tracking 3.37 - Archetypal energies of tracking 08.58 - Different worlds 10.22 - Finding the lions Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Our first morning of tracking in the Delta starts early - following the tracks of a lonely hyena track with lacklustre enthusiasm. Suddenly, our morning takes an exhilarating turn and the energy of the group shifts, as we find ourselves on the trail of a pack of Wild Dogs - also known as African Wolves, or Painted Wolves. In most places, we wouldn’t bother following the tracks of wild dogs as the ground they cover is too vast. But here, in the Delta we have no boundaries or time constraint. We feel the vitality and the movement of the wild dogs and we begin to move as a pack. The hours pass and we follow onwards into a massive wilderness. We are interacting with the wild like few people can. The wild has started to shape us. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Timestamps 1.34 - On the track of Wild Dogs 09.22 - Losing the track 12.35 - We will always remember this track Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

The Okavango Delta is an incredible natural phenomenon that can be seen from space. When we land in Maune, we meet up with two fellow trackers, and graduates of the Tracker Academy, Otto James and Innocent Ngwenya. Personally, there is something very satisfying as a tracker to meeting up with other elite trackers on the edge of a massive wilderness. I couldn't be more excited. There is a feeling of adventure in the air. Before we head south to meet with the Bushman, we visit a leopard habituation programme, pioneered by the Tracker Academy. What has been achieved with the leopard habituation programme is remarkable and has had a profound impact on conservation. We drive north from Maun over dusty wild roads into the Delta. It's a vast and beautiful wilderness. It's hard to describe, but it feels like the deeper we go into the wild, the more at home we feel. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Leopard Habituation Habituation is when a tracker spends months and months tracking a leopard, slowly building a relationship of trust with that animal. It's important to stress that habituation is not taming. The animal remains as wild as ever. The process starts by finding the animal on foot using tracking over time, you show it you mean it no harm. Eventually the animal becomes calmer, and relaxed enough through the constant presence of trustworthy humans, to allow itself to be seen. The result of having wild leopards that allow themselves to be seen is almost impossible for a game reserve to quantify. If the habituation process is successful, suddenly whole reserves (wild areas where animals are being protected) become viable. Tourists come from everywhere to see the leopard, one of the world’s most elusive animals. This results in not only the ultimate protection of the land, but also the development of a local economy. Habituation is about rebuilding the relationship between humanity and nature. Learn more here. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCSe6YpNgQM) -- Tracker Academy (https://www.trackeracademy.co.za/) was established to preserve the indigenous knowledge of wildlife tracking. Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Imagine a time when nature was our storehouse. When we knew how to share and to simply be. We knew we didn’t need much for our expedition to the Kalahari. For the Bushmen people, food surpluses are not prominent, as the environment itself acts as a storehouse - imagine a sense of deep psychological abundance and knowing you will always be provided for. Simplicity is abundance and the desert calls for a beautiful simplicity. I always know when I'm in an important experience because the experience itself starts to constellate new thought processes. I start to daydream about how to ignite the collective psychological abundance in our culture. What can we do to instill a sense of abundance in people? I don’t know what we will find on our expedition - but I am excited about simplicity. I hope with the Bushmen people, I can touch an older way of life that might teach me how to live in this one. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. -- Boyd makes reference to the book Boiling Energy, by Richard Katz (https://www.amazon.com/Boiling-Energy-Community-Healing-Kalahari/dp/0674077369) Timestamps (4.26) - Learning about the life of the Bushmen people (6.14) - Modern life structures (7.41) - Simplicity in the desert Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

The expedition begins with Alex van den Heever - close friend, seasoned wildlife tracker and founder of the Tracker Academy. We want to understand how closely the Bushmen people are still living in tune with nature. We want to find out what skills have been lost and what still survive. We want to understand whether the ancient hunting skills associated with the art of tracking are still being taught. To explore this place at the intersection of nature and the human psyche, is my deepest calling. To be with the Bushmen people, is to go back through time to where this intersection is closer to the surface of consciousness. We are going into a rare place in these modern times. We are going back to the wild. Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. -- The Tracker Academy (https://boydvarty.com/impact/tracker-academy/) was established to preserve the indigenous knowledge of wildlife tracking. The persistence method is possibly one of the oldest forms of hunting, practiced long before the invention of bows and arrows, and the domestication of dogs. It is also known as the great dance, and together with the art of tracking, it has evolved into more sophisticated levels that are still practised today, by modern hunter-gatherers, in some parts of the world. Timestamps (0.44) Alex van Heerden, Renias Mhlongo and the Tracker Academy (9.23) Preparing for the Kalahari Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

A good story will set you apart in almost any setting. When I was working as a safari guide, I would notice that a story could always shift the group's energetic momentum towards you, which is important when you are guiding. More than being a momentum shifter, a well-crafted story could, in the right moment, be profoundly transcendent. If you cultivate your capacity as a storyteller, you cultivate your life. If you are becoming a storyteller, you're working on your life as much as you're working in it. Stepping back to work on, and develop, the multiple stories that make up your life is important work. It will radically leverage your life and your impact in almost any setting. Humans are narrative creatures. This has been true since the first people told stories around the fire. When you become a master of narrative, you become a world maker. Mentioned in this episode: Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) The Tracker Academy (https://www.trackeracademy.co.za/) was established to preserve the indigenous knowledge of wildlife tracking. Connect with Andreas Sitole (https://www.instagram.com/andreasithole/) Learn more about David Rattray and Fugitives Drift (https://www.fugitivesdrift.com/david-rattray/) Timestamps (5:35) David Rattray, South African Historian, and the story that set him apart (15.32) - Working on your personal story (19.57) - Andreas Sitole’s story ‘Into the Unknown’ Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

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: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

There is a deep chasm between the making of art and the experiencing of it. When I am in that chasm - a solitary path - I know I must face the resistance in the now, knowing what it can give in the future. Are you willing to do what it takes to be creative? Art is experienced by the public, in the public. But in most cases it is created in crushing solitude. At some point, if you are to produce good work, you will need to be alone in a room for a long time. Within those days there will be beautiful flow. But mostly there will be a kind of self consciousness, at times even a self hatred, of procrastination - a dull judging solitude. It is always a profound challenge to be alone long enough to create something of quality. I certainly know this as a writer. As a Story Hunter you must have the courage to be alone enough to make your art. Timestamps (03:15) David Foster Wallace - chasm of art Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

As a Story Hunter, I have found that remote places are often the natural habitat of wild characters. Finding characters in life is becoming harder, as life becomes more homogenized. Characters almost always have found their own uniqueness and a path to express it. They seem to fit what they’re doing - they know what lights them up. They know what they have to offer. And almost always, they know how to live in a way that is unique to them. Characters almost always have a different worldview, and they are often world class in an unusual field. When you spend time with a character who has mastered a state, your own sense of what is truly possible is expanded. Characters help you imagine a world of possibility for yourself. Timestamps (5:40) Losing an arm to a crocodile (8.10) Discovering your personal uniqueness (11.25) Good reason to find characters Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Being lost is part of being found. In this episode, I share my experience of being lost, tracking lions with group of guests on a Track Your Life retreat. Stories are layered with meaning. Meaning is almost always a constellation of thoughts and beliefs that weave into a story - and retreat participants were pulled into an unfolding co-created story, making meaning out of the experience. They had learnt a basic universal lesson: there is always something unfolding as it should. I learnt a lot during those few hours of being lost. In particular, I had learnt that nothing bad ever happened to a storyhunter. Mentioned in this episode -The Track your Life Retreat is an extraordinary experience of self discovery. Find out more: https://trackyourlife.co.za/ - Learn more about Londolozi (https://www.londolozi.com/en/about) Timestamps (02:06) Lost in lion country (08:54) Making meaning of stories (12:23) Run in the wild Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Visit Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

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. Storytelling is about providing context and meaning. It's a discipline of attention, a way of helping others understand the world around them. Mentioned in this episode Listen to Boyd’s epic account of 40 days and 40 nights spent alone in a treehouse in the wild eastern part of South Africa. https://boydvarty.com/about/40-days-40-nights/ Learn more about Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Timestamps (02:04) Barry, the Buffalo (08:00) Safari storytelling tradition Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) and X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

If you are to become a storyhunter you must live stories. You must find a way to say yes to life beyond the known. Seek out people and places that resonate with things you're naturally curious about. Curiosity will pull you into unknown circles. If you can be in those spaces, adventures will emerge. Make friends with people who will pull your life into stories. Say yes to something you normally wouldn’t. There is a story across town, if you can learn to say yes to life. Timestamps (02:32) The Rift Valley (3.32) Buying motorbikes in Kampala (8.57) Jesse Isla - Time is undefeated Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

A person who can tell a story is gifted with the ability to help people understand and feel. A truly brilliant storyteller is structuring awareness - they are an instrument for meaning. This is why storytelling - an ancient shamanic art - is magic. This podcast series emerged out of a time when I had retreated back into the wild african bushveld, after three years of almost endless travel. I wanted to disappear for a while. I have come to think of anonymity as one of life’s deepest gifts. Almost instinctively, after a period of time, I found myself chasing stories again. This is how I became a Story Hunter. Timestamps (3:34) Martha Beck: Creative people bounce (06:48) Going back to the wild Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. Learn more about the work of Dr Martha Beck: https://marthabeck.com/ Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa - visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. The persistence method is possibly one of the oldest forms of hunting, practiced long before the invention of bows and arrows, and the domestication of dogs. It is also known as the great dance, and together with the art of tracking, it has evolved into more sophisticated levels that are still practised today, by modern hunter-gatherers, in some parts of the world. Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

https://boydvarty.com/world-village/ Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/

Find the track of a more purpose driven life: https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/track-your-life-online-guided-retreat/ Enroll in Boyd's Online Course Here: https://boydvarty.com/courses/track-your-life-online-retreat/ Once in the far north of Kruger national park's pafuri area I found a clear pool of spring water rising out the earth. The pool was surrounded by three huge ebony trees and a giant eagle owl flew out from under the deeply shaded branches as I approached. The presence of the owl adding some intangible sense of spirit to the place. The water was crystal clear and bubbling happily out the earth. As I knelt to put my lips to the water I felt like I was being let into some great secret. My body took on the shape of an animal drinking lips to the water……and an archetypal connection millions of years old ran like a current through me. I like the wild animals of that wild place I was drinking from the secret source. I think to know wild water in these times is the kind of thing we have forgotten to even know we want. The way it runs into you full of the codes of the minerals and plants of that place……wild water is full of information that attunes your body with its energy. Unbottled, untreated…….having never known a pipe or a cistern wild water is full of spirit. I'm going to talk in a very shamanic way about how to get to know a river. I'm going to talk from inside the mythological way to share the way I make meaning of the world around me. I might say it like this Once upon a time a man lived in a tree by a river. Far off to the west he could see the high mountains in which the river rose. The man longed to know the spirit of the river for it gave so much life on its journey. He knew that he must go to those mountains to know from where the water of that river was born. Only then could he truly know the river. This was running through my head as the pickup swung through the foothills and climbed the escarpment. As the crow flies the mountains were only 90 km from where I had lived in the tree but by car it was a circuitous 180 km winding drive that took you from 300 meters lowlands up to about 1600 m on the edge of south africa's high plateau. In historical times there had been a natural flow of native people who lived away from malaria on the highlands and descended the escarpment via hundreds of foot paths to hunt in the lowlands when the winter came. My destination was my friend's bungalow, a beautiful mountain cabin with no lights and streams full of trout that flowed past it .The landscape around the house is a rugged kind of african Scottish highlands. High ridged terrain with deep vegetative gorges. Unusual birds, eland and mountain reedbuck….and a silence in which a leopard that was never seen slipped past. That first night in the bungalow the man did not sleep. He was between this world and the next. All night he tossed and turned in the darkness and dreamed that the mountains had a message for him. Eventually I rose well before dawn, drank a cup of coffee and set off with my friend through the freezing dark for the highest peak. Mount Anderson is the watershed…..from which all the rivers that run east to the kruger national park flow Through a trailess darkness we walked for the summit…..the stars giving way to a crisp dawn. We were fit and walked fast… cold air burning our lungs. Learning the mountain in some intrinsic way you can only achieve by being on it The summit at dawn was icy with a whipping wind and a thick fog so that one could not see how the land fell to the east calling to the water. But Up there on the peak I left an imprint of my body ……so I could always suddenly be back there. So I could always send a greeting upstream to the mountain from my home in the lowlands. What I could now say is that I had been to where the rivers rise. The source…….but not the source of the source…….water is too free for that and one can never really say where water begins or ends. If you know water somewhere you know water everywhere. The man came down from that communion with the high peak with stiff legs found a cold mountain pool to swim in. The water was freezing with aliveness and he drank and drank. Saturating himself. Baptizing his body with that kind of purity. I tell you these things in these ways as a remedy. I don’t mean to be flowery or poetic but in my time with native people I started to think of the relationship with all things as an exchange of an unseen aliveness. A connected story….like the story of all water… in which you weave yourself into the web of other currents of life. A river, a mountain, a friend. You can interact with the experience of living on so many levels and for me there is always a story within the story. The way of meaning making is the way we make the story of our life. I could tell you that on the night of the day we submitted we drove up a steep hill with a bag full of beers to watch the sunset. The light cut the cold mountain air in clear blazing holy gold. I looked to the peak of the mountain now as a place I knew and that knew me. The place where the river begins. A source of life and personal relationship. The remedy for this strange time to remember the story of the great relationship. We have to be soft enough and wild enough to tell it. To remember how to be friends with the earth in personal ways again. Personal. personal relationships with rivers and mountains and trees. Till it's normal again. To be married to a volcano. And related to a bear. And for a leopard to come to you to remind you that there is magic. Leaving that hillside at dusk the man saw a flash of eyes in the headlights. Then as if materializing slowly into form in the half light the shape of a leopard. A huge male with a thick neck sunk low to the ground and stepped off the road but did not run. For a time they all watched each other. The man knew this was the keeper of the catchment. The guardian of the river This is the most secretive of cats. And forever on when he looked west from his home beside the river…….he would know the source, the mountain, that cold pool and think of the silence in which up in those mountains a leopard moved. 4-0 out. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Followed a rhino bull, but he led me in circles. I couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that a rhino was trying to shake me off his tail. To add to the confusion there were also tracks of a female rhino from the night before. If the rhino was my nemesis then he was my sacred enemy. The difficulty he was providing was causing untold growth in my tracking ability. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Journal entry. The best time to be in the leadwood forest is in the creamy light of a full moon. All around the trees peg a scale of time beyond human comprehension to the earth. It can be a strange thing to watch people from all over the world walk into the dappled light of the trees and fall silent. In my days as a safari guide I would wait for the third or fourth day of a safari. I would wait for the hysteria to see animals to subside and then take people to the forest. You see the forest can be experienced on many levels and I have come to believe that it will meet you where you are ….it will take you to the level of stillness, wildness or reverence that you have cultivated in yourself and then some. The deeper you are the deeper the magic of the forest. The poet david whyte talks about the conversational nature of life. The idea that your life will never be exactly how you planned it to be but equally it will never be exactly the way life wanted it. for all our living days we are in a co-created experience with living…..some of our agency….mixed with life or god, or whatever you call its plan. Inside of this we have action when we know to take it and surrender when we have reached the end of what we can do…. another dance. We have the development of a contemplative mind ……the cultivation of a mind in which many things in the world can be true at the same time. Being in nature takes you naturally into this kind of inner exploration. If your eyes are open in a place life the leadwood forrest you can't help but notice the relational nature of nature, As dawn breaks in the forest a dark bull nyala lifts his head out of long brown winter grass to look at me. Franklins begin to chatter into the dawn. In the stereo all around me hyena started to call. A hyena is the perfect embodiment of opportunism. As he moves craftily through the bush he seems to have a single thought running through his head…… “what's in it for me?” ‘how could this situation beeeeee good for me” If you have ever battled to put your own needs on the table……hyena is your guy. He's gonna show you how. Im developing a strange technique for this podcast. What I do is go to a place like the leadwood forest. I move through the terrain at different times of day. I take a big sniff of the Amazonian snuff called hapi which is a mix of tobacco and ashes of herbs. Then with my head empty of thoughts I open myself and move through the space. Opening myself to a different way of knowing. It's like I'm trawling through the feeling of the place and each feeling is full of invisible codes that later when I sit down with my notebook will start to come out as memories, encounters, stories and insights. You see like those hyena calls in the forest this morning took me to an image of the hyena. In my mind's eye I saw his slanted body loping away with the leg of a giraffe held across his jaws and a look of glee on his face. Imagine your dog walking proudly around with a weed wacker in his jaws and you have a sense of how much this hyena had bitten off more than he could chew. This little encounter in my imagination takes me to the clarity of knowing that a hyena has. A hyena wants what he wants. This idea makes me think of the hundreds of people I coached who have started having huge transformations when they started to ask clearly without agenda or attachment for what they want. I think of how early on in my own journey this idea was totally foreighn to me. I remember a whole night in a ceremony where I lay half hanging off the edge of a mattress and it never occurred to me to ask people to move over. I had grown up in a world where resilience was the most needed skill…..you didn’t need what you didn’t have so get on with it. I'm very grateful for that place in myself but I remember also releasing that one of the ways to create more of the life you want is to want and ask….. “Will you move over for me? I need more space” could not sound more silly to me now but at the time it was the silly beginning to much big wants and asks that I was going to allow myself. It was a breakthrough to something new. A first step I could build on What will keep you out of asking for what you want? You limit what you think you deserve. The desire to not be too much trouble. The fear of needing things from other people Your fear of being rejected. Your assumptions about what other people will think of you asking. If you think i'm being trite well then try it. Take the next week and wherever you go……in your work……family……out for a walk. Start asking people around you honestly, clearly and without justification for what you want. Start with will you………rather than can you. Will you walk with me Will you go out with me? Will you upgrade me? Will you promote me? Will you hug me? Pay attention to where you can just ask……..notice where you cant…….notice where you don’t because you assume you know what the answer will be. Pay attention to where you hide from asking. Where you use shyness to be a victim Now all of that comes from a hyena in the wild. And this is where it gets mystical to me…… Track this like a tracker Something calls me to the forest as a sacred site……im there at dawn on a particular day to hear a hyena call……..this sets me thinking about how my life changed when I just started asking clearly …….transmitted via this podcast to you…….now you pick up the thread and see where it takes you this week. Who is creating the way life is unfolding itself through a notion,…..into a leadwood forrest……via the call of a hyena…..into my ears……through imagination …….into memory…….back into voice…….into your ears…….into action. Oh what great telepathy in a single field of interconnected consciousness we are playing in. What could be more sacred. Take action…….ask clearly for what you want and please report back. 4-0 out. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

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. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Mentioned in this episode: - The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. The persistence method is possibly one of the oldest forms of hunting, practiced long before the invention of bows and arrows, and the domestication of dogs. It is also known as the great dance, and together with the art of tracking, it has evolved into more sophisticated levels that are still practised today, by modern hunter-gatherers, in some parts of the world. Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Journal entry. Intuitive is defined as: using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive I think this is why I have always liked sacred sites because when you are at one “you are beyond conscious reasoning” you sense something in the air. and I like it there because for me there has always been more life beyond conscious reasoning. You only need to fall in love to understand the truth in that. There are different ways of knowing. On native medicine wheels there was always body, mind , heart , spirit. It was understood the mind was only one way of relating to or experiencing life. Plaque rock is a beautiful dome of granite that sits logged deep into the river bank. You can walk up onto it easily from the bank and then it falls in perfect smooth rock down to a pool below with a few young crocodiles and a lazy terrapin that live in it. Beyond that is a second band of rock and then the thick green phragmites reeds of the river. As a child when I would go there it may as well have been another planet. Running and playing on the large dome we could have landed on mars. The rock is warm in the late evening having absorbed the sun's heat and if you lay with your back on it will share that warmth with you. the whole rock feels alive. Like it has its own intelligence. Like the rock itself is a living presence. As I sit there on a winter's day I am the centre of a small universe that spins around it. Creatures slowly appear. A kudu in the midst of the far bank. A herd of nyala Herons kingfishers flying past. A lizard scuttles out from under a rock to bask. There's something you don’t do enough of….basking My grandfather who I never met used to sit on this rock. When I am there I can intuit his ancestral presence. I am a part of what came before, I am a part of what will come after. I am not self made. I do not think of myself as a life apart. I am a part of life. Inside of this understanding I see a bigger picture. For a moment I am set free from the innate narcissism that my life is in some way the most important thing that’s happening. I am part of a chain of unfolding life. My grandfather flew planes in the second world war. From north africa him and a rogue captain called hayward would fly to warsaw to drop supplies for the polish resistance. Hayward knew that if they flew high over the city they would be a slow moving target for the anti aircraft guns. so when he saw the city which was on fire he would fly low down the river, dodging bridges moving too fast for gunners then drop his cargo and go. flying home with barely enough fuel. After the war my grandfather took up lion hunting as a way to keep himself feeling alive. Only later when I came to understand trauma did it occur to me that the lion hunting was a common behaviour for someone with severe combat experience and ptsd. The need to seek out dangerous extremes to try and get the sound back on in your life. When my grandfather died suddenly at 54 the war was long over. Hayward loaded my 15 year old father in a plane and flew him from Johannesburg to the place where I now sat in the wild . flying over the rock hayward ever the renegade opened the window and tipped my grandfather's ashes out into the river. That’s how plague rock became an ancestral place for my family. When I was born my mother named me craig…..I cried and cried until the shangaans people told my mother I was crying for my ancestral name. they started calling me body and I became a quiet child. As I sit here this morning I can look down across the pool at the base of the rock to the second ridge where a plague with my grandfather's name on it….a name that is also my name. boyd varty it reads he loved the bushveld. I'm telling you this because your ancestry makes you close to your infinity and your mortality. When I am here I intuit some deep transformation in my own life that seems to be happening on a grander scale in the world. “the restoration of the planet will come out if shift in human consciousness” is my cry My grandfather was a lion hunter. I am a lion tracker.. My grandfather had severe ptsd……I have worked intensely with how to heal extreme trauma. We were both in love with the wild. As a hunter he was intictual as a healer so am i. In the men in my family for so long there was steel with no feeling .I am coming to respect both. Why am I saying all this from some forgotten rock in south africa …..and what does it have to do with you. Okay here goes. If you have bothered to listen to these podcasts and they moved you or interested you then something in you is intuiting what's under the words. You know that like me you are here for the mystery, you are here to live differently, you are here for nature, you are here to find your track. Your whole life a part of you deep down has known the way we are living is not the way. maybe you couldn’t say it for fear of sounding crazy but a part of you knows. A part of you has whispered I'm here for a different world……..I'm here to make that world by waking up to my life. For starters you are the chain in ancestral life…..whatever you came from you can be the start of a transformation for generations to come. Who knows the power of one authentic life. Life is full of platformless heros. For all we know Nelson Mandela's grandmother may have been the person who gave him the fortitude to be who he was. If you heal you heal the past…..if you heal you heal the future. Just ask yourself truly do I intuit “something beyond conscious reasoning for my life” I'm on this expedition on pure intuition. On one level Who cares if I go on these expeditions to the places that call me. Yet I'm called to this story in a way I realise I don’t have to understand. Imagine we were planted here… those of us with that intuition to awakening like sleeper seeds waiting to bloom. All your life you have felt it just beyond your amnesia ……you have been reaching for it like it just slipped your mind. The faith it has taken. The faith it will still take to say I will give up the rational and follow that other way of knowing. If you're listening to this you are either stone cold right now… in which case i'm probably just going to annoy you over time and congrats you made it this far ……or you're on fire. something in you is saying yes. I don’t mean to sound wafty….but im okay with it for a moment because I know that certainly the intuition has to lead to action. But for now from a huge ancestral domed rock by a river in Africa hear a voice reaching out to you wherever you are right now. Think of all the things that had to happen for these words to come to your ears. Trust yourself. Trust what you know deep down. Learn to live beyond conscious reasoning. That’s what i'm trying to do. 4-0 out. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Journal entry It all begins with sketchy reports of a very rare black rhino that was seen in the far north of the reserve. I drive out with my gear motivated by some deep tracking lore…. If there is a rare animal out there I must go and look for it. The inclination to seek out and find what is rare is fundamental to the tracker. In this case this results in an entire afternoon alone in heat and burning midday light scouting. It’s not romantic…..it's solo trudging…..self motivated. No one to make a show for. It comes out of a place in me. I walk through dry winter terrain in search of the track. I sweat and stare at the earth for any scuff or mark. Any sign of the beautiful creature Attuning to the way the ground speaks in some fundamental way. Nothing I'm tracking but I'm not tracking…. At certain levels of any practice or artform …..what you are doing gives way to who you are being. In martial arts fighting is a door to presence and discipline and devotion. In yoga the stretching is the front side for a life of compassion and service. I feel this now as I trudge around with no sign of a rhino. The tracking…..is becoming about a certain tenacity I am developing. It's about living the kind of life where lessons can find me. It's about practicing. Martha Beck, my mentor, used to say to me “how you do one thing you do everything.” With this in mind tracking shows me where I can be lackadaisical, where I give up too easily, it has shown me how I can lack concentration. My practice has handed me my shortfalls so that I may face them with tenacity. And I know what I develop in my practice becomes who I am in my life. I am developing my capacity for symphony…… My ability to allow seemingly unrelated parts of life come together. This quest for the sacred is of course more than that….. It's about living towards the track of my life. Today It's about hours alone in the heat on bad information. And who that makes you. It's about being willing to be inside of what calls me with the understanding that that’s how you become authentic. As you know my life has been defined by guiding. I worked first as a safari guide and then when my path pivoted I became a guide in ceremonial spaces. In both cases taking people into the wild or their own psyche the key was to know the terrain. You needed to have been there to those unknown places yourself. You needed to have been lost and found your way out. You needed to have scared yourself and become humble. You needed to make edges your new normals That’s how you became a guide. This understanding is what motivates me when after four hours I have not seen one fresh track. I walk past a beautiful impala lilly flowing in Miami pink against the dark bushveld. The koppie where I planned to sleep is off limits as someone has just sighted a leopard with a cub on it. I change my plan and drive south to another old platform in a tree called tingwe camp. The camp is set in a beautiful dry river bed…….dense with tamboti trees. As I arrive at dusk a family of bushbabies is leaping through the trees around the camp. Stop now and google bushbaby to meet a truly cool creature. Night is falling fast and the sky turns pink while the second the sun drops behind the horizon it gets cold. Up the river from me a pack of wild dogs has made a den in an old termite mound. Occasionally I hear the young pups squealing at their parents for meat. The night rushes in and with it cold. As I make the fire I feel terribly lonely. Solitude is both a gift and a trial. alone in the bush it can rattle your bones with its relentless presence. Before you ask yourself questions of spirit like. “am I on my mission” “am I living my purpose” you might ask how long you can be truly alone for with nothing to distract you.i don’t mean the thirty mins you schedule for your meditation. I mean hours and hours, no books, no journal, no podcast, nothing. The answer to that question may be an indication of if you are really ready for the other two. Around me the birds roost it clicks and tsks The fire starts and the night crashes onto me. Black. In the shadows of the fire there are ghosts of other nights I spent here. A July winter when I was 15 with my best friend. We had heard that beer was a taste you grew to like so we choked down beers every day in the hopes of becoming cool beer drinkers rather than the fruit cooler losers we were. Then We spent a lot of time trying to talk my older sisters friends into coming to sleep in our tree house so we could drink beers in front of them. In my twenties as safari guides on nights off we would come and sleep attingwe camp. by now we were beer drinking pros and I remember a night when a kind of wild fire dance culminated in about 20 of us covering ourselves in mud stealing back to the main lodge camp like special forces and abducting all other staff out their rooms to come and party with us. To be fair they didn’t resist much. In fact I recall a Land Rover full of muddy rangers, beautiful hostesses and other hostages packed to the brim. In the confusion of the raid someone had put a standing exercise bike on the bonnet of the land rover and now a ranger was pedaling it as it drove everyone back to the tree house The camp had been a place where many young guides in training had slept out in the wild for the first time. It was the place many young men and women under the stars for the first time had heard a lion roar at midnight. I tell you all of this because as I sat around that small fire last night…. I understood that part of why this spot is sacred to me is that it was dense with memory. It has held me through so many phases. In my immaturity it had held me and it had seen me grow from wayward to disciplined. And as I look back on it I don’t want to exclude that skullduggery from the sacred. I had been engaged to be married once….and after that fell apart I had come back to this spot fundamentally confused by the dilemmas of love and compatibility. If the arrow of time is not linear. If time is in fact a flat circle where everything is actually occurring simultaneously then as I sat by that fire I sat with versions of myself in time just a veil of perception away. And of course the insight that that produced was that the place had always been sacred…but only now from an inner awareness of what that may even begin to mean could I begin to perceive it. I tell you a silence fell as I felt the truth of this that was so intense it was like a force. The night held its breath. I sat in that intensity. Aware of a new quality in my own presence. I was aware that I was aware. The past gave way. the future froze. Was the sacred coming into me from the place or finally coming out me to make the place. All through the night that almost oppressive stillness remained. The star's crystal with cold above me. oppressive is the wrong word…..but never have i felt a calm of that intensity. Only once was the silence broken when a white faced owl called out. At times in the night I lay awake but without a single thought in my mind. the branches of the tree above me against the dark dimension of the sky looked like fronds of flat fan corral. At dawn a three legged hyena slunk eerily through the camp. I share this. And these recollections are a true part of the journey. And there is magic to being alone in the wild. But understand also that there is so much space between the magic.. where I am operating alone and self reliant. There is always the potential for danger and it is not so much romantic as it requires attention and the discomfort that comes with growth. I am pushing myself to seek the natural insights that come with time in unusual terrain. This is the work of making a symphony of wildness and solitude into growth and wisdom. I understand my own routines can also be ruts. I have to get outside of the bounds of normal life and see what I learn there if I ever want to comment on what it means to live. Wow i'm really not sure how to say this. Let me try this. When I was facilitating a lot of ceremony work……the schedule would be intense. A different group every night in a different city. Deep emotional process. Ptsd, abuse, visioning, rebirthing, deconstruction. Every night we sat for people and we held that space for healing and human making. I used to notice before the group I could be a total wreck. My girlfriend could have left me. I could have lost my bag. My own issues could be paramount but when I walked in that group the presence would come and no matter what was going on in my life a steady clear godforce was holding space. Man, that kind of experience leaves you wondering about the validity of your own problems. That they could plaque you all day and be gone instantly in the face of another's suffering or process. That work….. Like this work calls me forth in a way that makes me bigger than the smallest parts of myself. So yes I am searching for the sacred in wild places. But more than that I am trying to find what calls me forth. Because I feel like living towards that with motivation and discipline might be the sacred that is not a place. 40- out Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

The original purpose of religion was to bring sacredness to life. Imagine a time (whether prehistorical or transhistorical) when human beings lived moment-to-moment in the presence of the sacred. Religion was unnecessary. There was no separation between spirituality and life, no distinction between the sacred and the mundane, no division of the Godly and the worldly. When we lost the ongoing and immediate sense of sacredness, then we needed religion to bring us back to it. "Religion," after all, means "that which renews our connection." Then suddenly it was the day of the first expedition. I had dragged my feet enough…it was time to gear up and go. Taking my lessons from the tree I knew the key was just to start. Cut the crap and start. Get my sleeping bag and bed roll into the back of Wilfred (the willys jeep)…..grab my rifle, gas cooker, coffee pot and go. I was done planning…… Its time for action. But it was raining Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Anthony Bourdain once said “I know theres a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed all day and eat donuts. My life is a series or strategems to avoid and outwit that guy”. If you’re an artist you know this place. I wake up at 4 30 every day and meditate for an Hour. I track every day to practice my craft I do breathwork and work out. I diligently attend to what I need to do to keep my company going…. I maintain routines because I know my nature is profoundly ungrounded. I can be a drifter. I like to think I have made myself solid with disciplined routine. But despite all of this, as an artist on the brink of creating something beautiful…..’man that donut eater just shows up” The dragon of resistance. In truth resistance is its own powerful force. No artist goes untouched by its energy in your life. Its armed with all your past fears and doubts. It’s the worry that the muse has left you. It will tell you that you have nothing to share. that you’re a fake and a fraud. It remains… even as time and time again you learn that it has no ground to stand on. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

In a setting with almost no connotation for me to the Sacred. The Sacred is not just places but what happens in places. I will start with what I can. I will work with the track I have. I will go to the Sacred sites of this land to explore the sacred. I think the Sacred is archetypal….it's an energy of life. I will walk alone to specific places on the land……. Sleep on the ground…… meditate….and ask those places to help me understand. I will go unnassisted on my own two feet to the places that call me. You have to understand I am not a beaded necklaces kind of guy. I am open to the mystry but I am not a hippy. Its not all good vibrations with me. In fact I tend to be turned off by to much heart clutching incence burning. I'm allergic to anything that feels like we are contriving our way to a show of depth But I want to remember life in that way. If I could awaken that…..how far could I walk that sacred nature it into the world. I want to know it when I see it. I want to be able to feel it. I want to learn to make it. I want to understand the secret of the Sacred. I might not find anything As I sit here I can think of five places that are calling me. I could go to them. I could see what the ground says. The opposite of the sacred is the profane…. Must I go there too? The light and the dark. The whole ying yang. Boyd Varty Sacred Sites https://boydvarty.com/sacred-sites/ 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Boyd Varty decides to walk around the full boundary of Londolozi (no mean feet), and shares with us his adventure as he takes on this mission with Londolozi’s General Manager, Duncan MacLarty, Digital Storyteller and Ranger James Tyrrell and Head Ranger, James Souchon. The reason for walking, describes Boyd, was the classic intention of masculinity, and a desire to challenge yourself. Boyd who is used to walking 25km, was a bit anxious about doing double that on this particular boundary walk (equating to 31 miles). This group of four men, were both good walkers and good talkers and so many stories were shared over this time period. It is said that talking while walking leads to much deeper conservations and this was true for these four. It was the groups job to lift the individuals no matter how sore you felt. There is something wild and both mentally restful about being on your feet, describes Boyd. Listen as Boyd walks through different sceneries and passes various wildlife, including the Nstevu Pride of lions… Their day had been about walking, but in truth their day had been about so much more, listen below for some classic African storytelling: 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

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. 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

And then all of sudden we were there. The face of the people I love. Saying goodbye with immense gratitude to the tree and this beautiful place on the river. The last dawn from inside this experience on the river. I know this is not the end but the beginning. You will be hearing from me. There is so much life for us all to live. I’m not going to try and summarize of sign off well. I have said what I need to say. I will leave you with an anthem by the late great South Africa Johnny Clegg. Volume up, listen to the words: The world is full of strange behavior Every man has to be his own savior I know I can make it on my own if I try But I'm searching for a great heart to stand me by Underneath the African sky A great heart to stand me by I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart To hold and keep me by I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart Under African sky Sometimes I feel that you really know me Sometimes there's so much you can show me There's a highway of stars across the heavens There's whispering song of the wind in the grass There's the rolling thunder across the savanna A hope and dream at the edge of the sky And your life is a story like the wind Your life is a story like the wind I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart To hold and stand me by I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart Under African sky I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart I see the fire in your eyes I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart That beats my name inside Sometimes I feel that you really know me Sometimes there's so much you can show me I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart (Guka 'mzimba, sala 'nhliziyo) I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart (Guka 'mzimba, sala 'nhliziyo) I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart To hold and stand me by I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart Under African sky I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart (Guka 'mzimba, sala 'nhliziyo) I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart (Guka 'mzimba, sala 'nhliziyo) I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart (Guka 'mzimba, sala 'nhliziyo) I'm searching for the spirit of the great heart Songwriters: Jonathan Paul Clegg Great Heart lyrics © Rhythm Safari Pty Ltd https://www.johnnyclegg.com 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

A ceremony is a place to remember to remember. As I walk through my last 39 days I have a lot to reflect on. I remember the resistance that arose before leaving home. I remember the anxiety of the first few days when six weeks seemed like an eternity. I must remember to sit with anxiety with compassion. I remember the feeling of a shell being taken off after one week. How do I work with this after I return back? Optimization for me comes out of consistency. I must remember to sometimes just start. All through the day I intend to reflect on all these moments. In my experience re-entry is its own journey and art form. You have to remember that in change processes we spiral forward. We sometimes go back but on a different rung on the spiral. The key is to notice yourself, watch yourself and pay attention without judgement. That will create the awareness to shift from. Our inner world shapes our outer world. Imagination, creativity, enchantment, tracking, storytelling and pattern interruption. Nature is the deepest teacher. The gratitude I feel for the land here is impossible to put into words. Beauty to the point where I feel overwhelmed. Elephants, rhinos, leopards, starry skies, storms. I will miss the elephants mid-morning arrival at the river. And of course the tree is a love story all of its own. I have been a part of its ecosystem all on my own. This tree has taught me so much. It has been the host of one of the most transformational experiences of my life. In native cultures everything is alive, it is a being and I understand that now. This tree has been a true friend and will continue to be. In gratitude I also turn to all of you who came along for the ride and sent me notes of support. To be able to do this alone and with you was perfect. We are all connected. We know why we are here. To learn to heal to bring back the new old ways. To have fun and reach out and not let it all be too serious and to remember what living actually is. What if what we made here is the real world. The most natural scape is the real world. Its just a deep sense of the sacred which makes me reflective. Jesus is often depicted with his eyes open. Buddha is often shown with his eyes closed. In truth we need contemplation in action. No enlightenment has any power unless it is lived. I am also full of a very simple desire to do the best work I can do towards the transformation of consciousness. Today I am going to run as far as I can. Slowly relishing the feeling of the land under me. I am going to swim in the river and sit by the fire. There is a time to reflect on our reflections and PS its probably good I’m close to the end as I have a tooth that is killing me. I guess the lasting question is that in a matter of time, all of our lives will go back to normal. What do we want that normal to be? The treehouse is like a nest, my books tarpaulin, clothes and yoga mat is all around me. It’s quiet in the way of nature where the sounds make the silence rather than break it. Covid has been so hard for so many people but it also gave me a glimpse back in time. This reserve has been an empty Eden and I am Adam. What will it mean in 30 years to have lived with wild animals? Will it all be gone or will be wake up? Would you find it very hard to understand if I said that I’m learning to be at peace with both? Wherever we land, it will be there. 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

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. 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

Mentioned in this episode: The San people is the broad term for the name of many clans that make up the Bushmen. I will refer to the people I met with the term Bushmen because that is how they asked me to refer to them. The persistence method is possibly one of the oldest forms of hunting, practiced long before the invention of bows and arrows, and the domestication of dogs. It is also known as the great dance, and together with the art of tracking, it has evolved into more sophisticated levels that are still practised today, by modern hunter-gatherers, in some parts of the world. Resources: Online Courses: Become a Story Hunter - Sign up for the Story Hunter Online Course. (https://boydvarty.com/story-hunter-online-course/) Uncover the track of your life through the Track Your Life Online Guided Retreat. (https://boydvarty.com/course-listing/) Discover Boyd's books: https://boydvarty.com/book/ Come to Africa. Visit Londolozi (https://boydvarty.com/retreats/visit-londolozi/) Join Boyd’s community: Follow the journey - Subscribe to the Track your Life Podcast and never miss an episode. Sign up to Boyd’s newsletter. (https://boydvarty.com/contact/) Follow Boyd on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/boyd_varty/) X (https://twitter.com/BoydVarty) Visit Boyd's website (https://boydvarty.com/) for more.

Wow we made it to day 37. In so many mythological stories there is an idea that when you were born a twin was born with you. It was thrown out the cot and becomes your wild twin. It’s a scallywag, an outlaw, a rogue. IT slips chocolates to your nieces and nephews before supper. It’s willing to act outside the bounds of the rational. It doesn’t give a hoot about what anyone else thinks and can be relied upon to do something totally essential. It knows how to grieve, it does not control the longings of the heart. 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. Right pathers do very well until the age of 46. Then they start to wonder if its what they really wanted. They come to a place where they feel they are missing something of themselves. Left pathers struggle to ground themselves in the world, the options are paralyzing, the money is tight. Some can’t get through the drift of constantly drifting. But those who learn their process emerge around 46, after a harrowing run, fully alive and autonomous. I’ve always wondered if there is a path between? Where both pathers got in touch with the other somewhere in between. The only way a central path becomes available is through mentorship. Rates of download can be incredibly high between people who have integrated aspects of the other path. Mentorship is truly magical when it spontaneously occurs. Often in true mentorship there is no explicit instruction. Real mentorship is a shared presence. I was lucky to be mentored by Alex and Renias until I would go out tracking a lion thinking about what Alex and Renias would be doing in that particular situation. To be either a Mentor or a Mentee takes inner work. We can cultivate the ground in ourselves to create more sharing in our work and community. To be a mentor you need excellence, confidence and a map of having done it. You need to have a passion for what you do that is beyond you. A love for the art form itself. This requires a personal sense of abundance as you will give away some of what you have. This can be a challenge but when I have been shared with like that I knew something sacred was happening. The source never needs to really claim its the source. The Mentee needs humility, to be real with themselves as to where they are at and respect of what has been given. The role of a true Mentee is to learn it and evolve it. That is the responsibility bigger of you. So what does it mean to be wild. It certainly doesn’t mean doing whatever you want and asking to nobody. Dimensions of self come from attention. You have unconsciously found and expressed your talents and gifts. You have met your wild twin and are friends. It means your nature is not clouded by layers of other peoples rules. You have to pay attention and listen to what is being asked of you by life. The more you do your inner work the easier it gets. 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

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

I think of this experience as the slow removal as a shell. As the days went by I felt more myself. I felt the creativity coming back in, co-creating the story with nature. My energy levels return to new highs. My relationship with beauty was revived. I feel like so much of what I was trying to do before was trying to tune out, now I am trying to tune back in. I felt I was absorbing tons of information but my minds own capacity for dynamic movement was slowing. It’s like a fasted state, you know you are much much leaner. Things I used to eat I can no longer touch. When I eat something that I shouldn’t I get an instant no. After a long run I will crave exactly the kind of salt I need. I feel that with my mind. I relish the stillness and the silence now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m watching myself and sometimes I get into bursts of frustration and rage. In some way what I’m learning is that mystics went to nature as a set of bars. In nature you reset the bars of harmony, stillness and present. It shows you where you were, it shows you where you could be. It plants a flag. Stillness produces right action. Solitude teaches you about connection. Simplicity gives you more. Everything you want with the world is inward. How often do you meet someone who is enchanted with life? Its pretty rare isn’t it. Out here I feel like I’m touching that at moments. Utter enchantment. The bateleur is a long standing totem of my family. The spirit of guidance. The ways we naturally make meaning when we stand close to nature sustains us. Our relationship with life itself comes to life. That’s enchanting. I climbed high onto a single large boulder on a hillside and watched the land below me. My mind was empty of thoughts and watched with empty perception. All I could do was take it all in. I was actually there. That’s what it takes to be enchanted…to actually be there. Eckhart Tolle says that there are 3 levels of enlightenment. 1. Acceptance 2. Enthusiasm 3. And I forgot the third one I spent five weeks thinking about how long it was to be alone and now I have five days left wishing it was longer. Here is some homework, free write for at least a page on the following. Where do I see beauty? Where in life am I enchanted? What makes me feel the most alive? When was the last time I was totally on track? Who really sees me? What’s my mission? What do I complain about? Who do I complain about? What am I doing out of a sense of duty? If you bring back to life enchantment in yourself you can awaken it within other people in your community. Enchantment is a type of activism. 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/

At dawn I awaken breathing misty breath up into the branches of the tree. At midday a dust devil skids across the water spreading a rainbow across the sky. At night I am still visited by a lone firefly. In Jungian dream analysis, everything in the dream is a symbol of the self. The way to interpret the dream is to speak as it. I imagine everything I encounter is a symbol that I talk with and let it answer. Who are you I ask? I am the wind on the water. Describe yourself with three adjectives. What is your purpose? How are you trying to help Boyd? I always find the language strangely particular as you answer as the symbol. In this way your own subconscious feeds the information to you. I decided to walk in the afternoon with a water container. Immediately I realized it was much hotter than expected. When I was friends with the soldier Irwin, we would go on a 40km march with Irwin just sucking on a stone to keep the saliva in his lips. There were many elephants which required a certain type of bushcraft. What had meant to be a stroll through open clearings had turned into a tactical maneuver. In the outdoors dangerous situations often happen long before the danger. They happen through unexpected sliding variables. Assumptions you had made no longer fit the moment. Experience in some ways is the ability to arrest the preconceived ideas and assumptions to make new decisions out of those assumptions. My post lunch stroll had once again educated me about any post lapses of concentration. 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/ Impact | https://londolozi.africa Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/londolozi/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/londolozi Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/londolozigamereserve/