Lessons from a Master Tracker - Imminent danger
“The buffalo looks at you like you owe it money” - Ernest Hemingway. Photo: James Linnett
Renias raises his clenched fist. “Freeze in position”, he is signalling. In tracking sign language, this means imminent danger. No movement, no sound.
It was about 7:30 in the morning, and we had only moved 200 meters from the game vehicle, starting our day looking for tracks to follow on a game path along the river line to our right.
While the bush to our left was quite open, the river line was dotted with large, dense thorn bushes. This is prime habitat for a “dagga boy,” an old, solitary African buffalo bull. More aggressive and unpredictable than their herd counterparts, they charge when threatened. They and the hippos, whose tracks we saw all around, are why we had Marius and Riaan with rifles, leading us through.
Suddenly, four small birds flew over us from behind, turning back toward us, which was unusual. Immediately they saw us, they balked, emitting the repetitive “krak-krak-krak” of their alarm call.
The red-billed oxpecker feeds on parasites, like ticks. Their primary hosts are large mammals such as, you guessed it, buffalo and hippo. Their alarm call warns their hosts of approaching danger. This time, we are the danger.
I barely registered the alarm call, given the oxpeckers are 20 feet in the air over our heads, not sitting on the back of an animal.
The oxpeckers suddenly headed toward us again, dropping behind a large bush, just four meters from Riaan. Only one reason explains this behavior: Food! And food means buffalo.
That’s when Renias’s fist goes up, and we all take root.
What had been a cheery, joking stroll turns deadly serious. Riaan and Marius have eyes like saucers but remain immensely calm—we are in the danger zone, too close for their rifles to be of use. We have to stay still and thoughtful.
With slow hand movements, Renias signals to backtrack quietly and find another way around the bush. Even now, none of us has seen what is there, and I am still rather blasé about the danger. How could we be so close to 1,500 lbs of fury and not hear a thing?
We move away absolutely silently, 40 yards or so, giving Marius and Riaan time to ready their rifles. We follow a different route around the bush and, looking back, see a very large old buffalo bull staring at us. Two steps further, and Riaan would have been feet away from those lethal horns.
We move on, and Renias begins my lesson. Using the adrenaline surge to cement the key things we have seen and learned:
“What did you see?”
“I saw oxpeckers flying from behind us, turning and approaching us before balking and flying back.”
“What did you assume?”
“I assumed they were on their way somewhere else.”
“What did you learn?”
“Oxpeckers flying close to us always requires attention”
“What did you hear?”
“I vaguely heard a bird call.”
“What did you assume?”
“I assumed that flying oxpeckers meant no danger.”
“What did you learn?”
“The oxpecker call is always significant.”
“What did you not hear?”
And so the questions continue.
Renias uses the imminence of the moment and my heightened state to connect intellectual knowledge to our visceral experience. This emotional connection shortcuts the neural pathways for future retrieval and action.
The lessons learned in that moment stayed so much closer to the surface than anything else over my two weeks. And when it comes to learning itself, I have three observations:
We learn more at the edges of acceptable norms than we do in the middle. Being in a “risky” situation creates a prime learning opportunity.
An emotional connection between the event and its lessons aids quick recall.
Immediate debriefing cements the learning experience.
We shouldn’t seek life-threatening situations for learning, but how can we create impactful, real-time learning experiences in our daily lives? Your thoughts?