Monday, January 27, 2020

Track awareness.................


     When I was a boy, Renias would take me to a game path, the open trail created by animals as they traveled from clearing to water.
     "Walk down it and tell me what you see," he would instruct.
     I would walk down the trail and see the tracks of a herd of impala and then the massive four-toed foot of a hippo.
     "Hippo and impala," I would report.
     "Famba uya languta futhi."  Go look again.
     The next time, I would notice under the hippo track a washed-out genet track, where a squirrel had bounded towards a tree, and where a hornbill had dust-bathed.
     "Now walk and listen," Renias would say.  Then, "Walk, listen, and smell."
     Each time, there would be more information.  It was like I was an instrument tuning myself to the information around me.  Later in my life, I would come to realize that becoming aware of such information and the feelings it evokes—the people who are important to you, the things that bring you to life, the arrival of something meaningful—is its own kind of consciousness:  track awareness.  You can easily miss this information if you don't know how to see.  Track awareness is how attuned you are to what is around you.  It is recognizing a track when it appears.  It is teaching yourself how to see what is important to you.

-Boyd Varty,  The Lion Tracker's Guide To Life

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