Lessons from a Master Tracker - the final lesson!

Losing my track! Photo: James Linnett

A quiet panic

Three hours into a Track and Sign school day, my brain is saturated by the number of different signs I’ve been logging in my notebook. We’ve just left the eponymous “James Pan” and are heading east after a late breakfast on the trail.

We’ve only moved a couple of hundred meters (Point A on the track) when Renias calls out.

“James, come here. Close your eyes, pull your hat down over your face, and hold my hand. Follow me.”

Renias spins me around several times, then we walk, then spin a few more times, before moving on again.

“Follow us,” he calls to Marius and Ross, our guides, as he knows I can get my bearings based on where they were standing.

After a minute of spinning and walking in what I take to be a random direction, Renias stops. My hat is pulled off my face, and I open my eyes.

I’ve tried to keep my bearings, but once I open my eyes, I have no idea where I am. Nothing seems familiar, and my internal compass is overwhelmed by new visual information.

“Now,” says Renias, “you need to lead us back to the game vehicle. We are a group of tourists on a walk with you, and we need to get back to catch a flight back to the USA. Let’s go!”

This will be my first time leading the group. In an unfamiliar landscape, and with signs of every major predator wherever we look.

“It’s fine, James,” I say to myself, “You’ve learned how to tell east from west. Just find a termite mound and see which side the dwarf mongoose dung has been deposited on.” Dwarf mongoose love to bask in the early morning sun, and you find the majority of their droppings on the east side of the mound. “So get to it, let’s get calibrated and get moving.”

Point A is our starting point. After calibrating what I think is east and west, my plan is to head south-west back to where I know the vehicle to be.

Take a look at the photo above to see how that played out!

Instead, as you can see, I immediately start out due East. More than that, we are moving at speed. However calm I think I am, my pace and my heart rate suggest something else.

The team follows me, letting me move ahead. I’m paying no attention to anything around me, not the tracks, not the sounds, because I have convinced myself this is ground we’ve already passed through an hour ago and had found no danger.

After about a quarter of a mile, Renias calls a halt to the madness (point B). He hands me back my GPS watch, and tells me to follow its track back to our starting point. Even now I haven’t realized how far off track I went. I’m certain that I was heading south, rather than due east, and part of me still thinks that!

With GPS in hand, I decide to make up for lost time and head in as direct a line as possible back to the vehicle, with the three of them in tow. If there is a thicket, we go through it; if there is a fallen tree, we climb over it—all at pace, with no stopping to check the surroundings or the team. I’m driven by following my GPS and getting back quickly.

What has taken three hours of walking on the way out, we complete in 36 minutes!

As we reach the vehicle, everyone is sweating and out of breath, and the ribbing and teasing begin at the pace I had set.

After a few minutes, Renias asks me what I’ve been feeling. Bear in mind I still have no idea how far off course I was at the beginning. “Fine! Just fine!” I reply.

“Yes, but what were you feeling?” he asks again.

“I felt a bit tired and thirsty, but otherwise good.”

“Did you feel the panic?”

“No, I felt quite confident, actually.”

“Tell me what you did, and how you did it.”

“Well, I felt the first thing I needed to do was confirm my compass references. I looked at the termite mound and saw all the dwarf mongoose droppings on the far side, and assumed that to be east. I knew we had moved east from our original northerly track up to the pan, so I figured we should be heading southwest to bring us directly back to the vehicle.”

“And what were your thoughts about heading back to the vehicle?”

That is when the penny drops. I had created pressure on myself, based on the original direction from Renias, to get back to the vehicle “as quickly as possible,” which to me meant moving at speed in a direct line, regardless of the dangers that may have lain along that line.

Renias was right: I had panicked. Not in a “run around with your hair on fire” kind of panic, but a gentle panic that drives suboptimal decision making.

If I had been relaxed, I would have used the tracker’s mindset to find our last good track first.

After all, we had moved no more than 30 meters from the track we were on. As you can see from the track, we were less than a fifth of a mile from the large pan where we had our breakfast, and from where it was a straight walk on a clear trail back to the vehicle. Both of those were immeasurably easier to find than a vehicle deep in the bush a mile and a quarter away. In dangerous ground, the first priority is to find a safe, guaranteed track home.

But I panicked. And even when Renias called me back from disappearing into the east and I had my GPS on my wrist, I was still in a gentle panic. Now, I could even see where our original track was, and I still chose to take the direct approach rather than backtracking.

“What were you panicking about?” asks Renias.

“We are just in the bush, James. We know there is a road a few kilometers to the east, another to the south, and the river cuts across us to the north and west, no more than a couple of hours away. Whichever way we go, we will eventually find our way out,” he explains.

“We may not know where we are, but we aren’t lost.”

There it is, another Renias zinger.

This is a wrinkle on his classic: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how I’m going to get there.” referenced in the book: “The Lion Tracker’s Guide To Life” (by Boyd Varty, read it if you haven’t already!).

Around the fire that evening, I wondered how often in our own lives we confuse not having precise awareness of where we are with being lost? Particularly in the West, we have an expectation that progress means more and more specificity and precision. And how do we respond when we confuse the two, are we driven into marching off immediately at pace, possibly in the wrong direction?

Not knowing our exact position doesn’t mean we’re lost. It’s about having confidence in our knowledge of the broader landscape and our ability to navigate and adapt. By staying calm, reassessing the situation and trusting our skills, we can find our way both in the wilderness and in life. How do you stay on course when you feel lost? Share your thoughts!