This Track Your Life retreat saw a particularly cold July winter make for beautiful crisp dawns and clear starlit skies each morning when we went out at 5 am.
Each day started with meditation and contemplation as the dawn broke.
We tracked rhino on the first day and were unsuccessful in the morning but had a superb sighting on foot in the afternoon.
The following morning we went after lions and found their tracks deep down in the south of the reserve.
The lions were trailing buffalo and we were trailing the lions. The tracking conditions were challenging but Renias did a superb job to stay on the tracks. Fresh dung and even fresh blood from a cut on one of the lion’s legs told us that we were hot on the trail.
We lost the tracks and spent time trying to find where we had lost the trail. Just as we were losing hope Renias got us back onto the tracks.
We found the lions in a wisteria grove. Three hours had passed since we started tracking and there was pure excitement in the group as a young sub adult male lion growled softly at us.
That afternoon we found a pack of wild dogs and got a masterclass from them in the art of creation and tracking. The dogs embodied everything that tracking teaches as they hunted. Alertness, tenacity and presence were all on display as well as a profound energy of joy. They were teaching us how to create.
It was intense as we followed them in the Land Rover. We had to drive fast to keep us with them as they ignited the bush around them with energy. At one stage a flustered hippo even broke from a waterhole in distress.
It was amazing to watch nature be the teacher.
Later that evening we had a huge elephant bull walk up to our group as we made a fire in a small clearing. There was the deep sense that all day we had been in a profound union with nature. Now that the same stars that greeted us in the dawn were ushering in the evening, there was a feeling inside of each one of us that the shackles of modern life had truly been shaken.
