Do you hear the call of the wild?
There is a call in all of our lives, often hidden deep inside us. It is the call of the wild part of ourselves. Story Hunting is my answer to this call. And like all calls, it is easier to hear in the silence of the desert.
To follow my Story Hunting journey from the beginning, listen to Part 1 of the Story Hunter podcast.
It has been one year since our last expedition into the wild and untamed Kalahari Desert. There is something deeply addictive about the Kalahari – the heat, the sand and the silence. And, in the desert, with the Bushmen people, I feel an energetic archeology that calls to the mythic in me. We are uncovering and collecting older energy – and ancient wisdom. I will refer to the people I met as Bushmen, because that is how this ancient tribe asked me to refer to them.
I hope to be a bridge between this sacred energy and something long forgotten in all of us.
Listen to episode 1 of Story Hunter Part 3: Back to the Kalahari Desert👇🏽
These expeditions to the Kalahari Desert are part of a bigger journey of restoration.
Tracking is one of the first languages of humanity. And tracking with the Bushmen – the First People – is to step back in time. The Bushmen people of the Kalahari are deeply connected to their land and their profound ecological literacy means that their tracking skills are unmatched. Through these expeditions to track and run with the Bushmen people, we are learning how deep this indigenous knowledge runs, and the ways in which these ancient skills are still practiced today.
With the Bushmen people, we experience the deeply spiritual practice of the mythical persistence hunt and we respond to their call to help them revive and restore this historic practice. Persistent hunting is an art form that belongs to the Bushmen people – an incredibly complex skill demanding deep environmental insight, deep physical endurance and deep empathy with animals. These expeditions are about remembering these skills, and what it means to be human.
Because if we lose this knowledge we lose our connection with nature.
Great journeys are of the heart
These trips into the Kalahari Desert are becoming a rite of passage for me. Knowing that the indigenous skills of tracking are alive and strong is a source of healing for my heart. They also deepen my appreciation for the critical work of the Tracker Academy – an organisation that is reconnecting hundreds of young men and women with the birthright of their indigenous wisdom. The Tracker Academy is not only preserving and restoring the skills of wildlife tracking, but it is ensuring that they will continue to serve modern conservation efforts.
My expedition partners, Alex van den Heever and James Tyrrell are true Story Hunters, and masters of their art.
Alex is a world-renowned wildlife tracker and co-founder of the Tracker Academy, and James is a photographic filmmaker – a master storyteller – and wildlife guide.
We are each on a journey following our own track, yet we are bound by a need to shed modern culture and spend time closer to our wilder and undomesticated selves.
In the Kalahari Desert we join up with various other characters – conservationists, adventurers, and our Bushmen friends.
Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgalagadi – meaning “a waterless place”
Stretching for 350 thousand square miles in southern Africa, the Kalahari bakes under a relentless sun, where temperatures soar above 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and the antelope and other wildlife have evolved remarkable ways to go without water. Its red sands are often broken up by salt pans – vast, flat expanses of dried-up ancient lake beds that turn into shallow pools during the brief rainy season, drawing wildlife from hundreds of miles away.
The San people are the oldest inhabitants of this place and have lived here for at least 20,000 years. Their ecological knowledge – that guides them to water, food and medicine – extends far beyond survival skills. Their way of knowing and being emerges from a shared original language with the earth.
In this untamed and sacred place, we get to know the wild man alive in all of us.
Story Hunter Part 3: Back to the Kalahari Desert
Listen to the first episode: 👇🏽
You can follow my Story Hunting journey from the beginning, by clicking on the links below:
Part 1: The Magic of Storytelling Part 2: Back to the Wild