Track Your Life with Boyd Varty

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 i...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 p...

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 r...

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...

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 informa...

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 i...

A lonely day missing people. In a week I will be complete and its starting to stir up the mind. It feels close and creates a bout of anxious immaturity. I want to talk to them now but also I don’t want to leave this tree. I have come to ride the ups and downs of how the mind uses time. I sit in my chair and listen to the sounds of nature. A kingfisher hitting the water, elephants flapping and nyal...

The days are shortening and there is a distinct chill on the air when I open my eyes onto the branches of trees in the morning. I feel saturated with natural beauty. Winter is the time my ancestors used to come to this land back in the hunting days. It is the time when many tribes would sweep off the escarpment. I cross the river just after dawn moving on instinct to where I though the sound of th...

There was once a BBC report, maybe before the second world war. This is the BBC on the hour, there is no news on the hour. Day 31, there are no new stories at this time. That’s not true, its just that I’m going to a place underneath stories. I see friends across the world, around the fire. Friends in Canberra, California, Charleston, Bath. In stillness I know the exact moment of when a friendship...

I made an oatmeal breakfast that was Instagram worthy. The brand of oats out here is called Jungle Oats with a strong image of the Bengal Tiger on the front. There is a Chinese saying that the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago or now. I love this idea and feel it here as time warps. I don’t know where time has gone. I think our relationship with time shapes some of our relationship with l...

Wonderful encounters continue around the camp. Two young rhino bulls made their way past camp and after a short while I got on the tracks for some fun. They led me on the southern bank of the river. Past a Sausage tree and Apple leaf when I heard growling from 50 meters back from where I had come. The growling escalated and I immediately knew it was the mating leopards from the other day. My grati...

You would be amazed at how far crocodiles move at night. I found myself following the distinctive track for about 2 kilometers. I’ve spent a lot of time in the bush veld, but in this experience by nature of the experience I have been taken deeper. I have the will and the mindset to find out where crocodiles go. To be immersed in patterns that otherwise seem random. This is an understanding of a ce...

New addition to the list of animals seen from the camp, but I will get to that. One thing about living outside is that it makes you’re more hardy. You get scrapes and bites and sometimes if can feel like a slow attrition. I decided to run to the edge of the reserve where there is an anti-poaching camp. I ran out through high terrain, through dark soils and wet grass. I saw herds of zebra and even...

There is a line in the Book of Mormon where a Ugandan women is singing about the Utopia that can be found in Salt Lake City. At first it seems like another comedic line, but it’s actually profound. The women is imagining utopia from her point of reference. We all imagine inside our own frames of reference. The question is what are your friendly warlords? What is abundance? What is wealth? Real wea...

I am missing all my friends. In my mind I find myself composing long legends of the fall type letters on a typewriter. Dear friends….the nights grow colder, I think of you often. There is something deep about missing people and staying in the feeling of missing people rather than turning to WhatsApp. The daily presence of elephants has become something I look forward to. I went up into the tree an...

My decision to suspend all river bathing has been vindicated. Last night I shone my torch into the river and saw not one but two crocodiles in the water. I will tell you now about the curious incident of the rhino in the day. I went out for elephants but cut across the track of a rhino bull. A beautiful dinosaur three leaf clover tracker. The bull had left an impressive size of dung. I am a very g...

Fresh tracks of a pride of lions in the predawn light behind the camp. Its been strangely cool, almost like a cold winter has been knocking on the door. Tracks cut down into the river and onto a beautiful sandbank. The sand allows you to see very clearly how the pride plays with each other. The tracks then cut up onto a hippo path. I’m nervous to follow but do so anyway. The path opens into a smal...

Last night I had a dream. I was walking around the premises of the boarding school I went to when I was ten. I could see the dull linoleum floors and the fluorescent light hallways. There I would feel more alone than I have ever felt before. Through a strange quirk of the system the school would retain students for an extra year before they went to high school. It was my first encounter with dysfu...

Waking up I felt no motivation to get out of bed. So I just lay there. I thought of all the years I suffered from depression when I woke with the dreaded weight on me. 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...