Tag: tracking

Posted on by

Live Like a Tracker

An interesting question that I think about a lot: how do you balance exploring the new with savoring what you already know and love? Most of the time I prefer to explore, but the best part of this podcast experience for me has been meeting people who become close friends. For episodes 99 and 100, I’m bringing back two of the most popular past guest who are both now dear friends.

This week’s episode is split into two parts, today and tomorrow. Today’s episode is with Boyd Varty and tomorrow is with both Boyd and his sister Bronwyn. The incredible …

Read More
Posted on by

The Way of the Tracker: The Path of “not this”

When a great tracker loses the trail of an animal, he may learn where it has gone by discovering all the places it has not gone.

In the moment the tracker loses the track he meets the full 360-degree dimension of possibility. The animal could have gone in any direction and so each path of blank, trackless soil is talking to him.

“Not this path”, “not this path”

As he walks he is eliminating wedges of the full degree of that rotation. Refining where the trail may run by learning where it does not run. In this way, a tracker …

Read More
Posted on by

The Way of the Tracker: The Elephant Track

When you look at the image above, what do you see?

Perhaps you see a man standing in an odd position (I’m hiding a beer behind my back). Maybe you see the tree on the left of the frame that has had its head cut off or the odd shadow below it.

When I showed this image to my tracker friends and asked them what they saw they all answered as if I was asking a stupid question.

“The elephant …

Read More
Posted on by

Into the Unknown

Boyd Varty Retreats

To be a tracker is to develop a relationship with the unknown.  Every time you come across a trail left by some elusive wild creature a question forms in the space between your eyes and the track, a question that is innate to every trail. The scope of unknown that lies ahead is unfathomable. The terrain is unknown, the animal’s movement, mood and whereabouts. Its presence on a vast landscape brings one to thoughts of needles and haystacks.

And yet, the tracker is inclined towards this. He is attracted by all the things he can’t know for within that evolution …

Read More
Posted on by

The Way of The Tracker – Part One

Trackers are adept at creating psychological states. On the trail of an elusive creature they enter a paradoxical place. They are obsessively determined to find the animal but the desire to find it has not been allowed to become a crippling attachment to outcome.  What they commit to in order to generate the outcome is simply the next track, then the next track, then the next.

To me, what it looks like, is the dynamic nature of play. They are relaxed; they allow the moment to evolve. They lose the track and check the trail up ahead the go back …

Read More