Show Notes
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