Everything leaves a track. It is the mark of our presence, an acknowledgement of our impact on this earth. We can map out where we have been, what we have consumed and where we have shopped. We can work out with whom we have been and with whom we haven’t. and as we look back over the twists and turns of the many branches of our journeys, we can see clearly the mistakes we have made or the opportunities we have grasped. The stories of our lives can be pieced together like intricate tapestries which would make for some interesting reading in reflection as we follow the pathways of our own puzzles.
Yes, everything leaves a track, and all of us are trackers. We are all trying to follow something. We are looking for signs and signals to show us the way. Our curiosity is fueled by connections and clues, and we search for the roads to reward or redemption. Or maybe even revenge. Financial aficionados are constantly challenged by the numbers which should be in the balance sheet, but may be struck dumb by those that are not. Marketers scratch beneath the surface to understand where consumers are moving and migrating towards, and Doctors follow the symptoms of sickness in order to prescribe the correct cure. Weathermen and women send up their balloons, Rock Drill Operators follow reefs rich in ore, and Air Traffic Controllers scrutinise their screens as if other’s lives depended on them. For they do. Every minute of every day.
Tracking has been described as the oldest Science known to man. It is a science because it relies on memory and it insists on rigorous procedure. There is a logical and rational process to be followed in a pursuit of patterns and probability. Things can be measured, and if we are not sure of the answer, we can embark on a systematic sequence of signs and a dogged deciphering of dents to determine what walked here. Or ran. Or slithered. Or hopped. Or jumped. Or maybe disappeared completely as even animals which fly leave a track sometimes. People that have never walked in the African bush before have identified the spoor of zebra because they have ridden horses. Warthogs, because they have farmed with pigs, and buffalo because of walking in fields of cattle. The structure of a cat’s paw doesn’t surprise many, but out here, it is the size of that paw which takes one’s breath away.
But tracking is also an art. And art encourages imagination and a sense of what might be? It is as much a challenging of the question than it is of hunting the answer. Art is core intuition or gut feel. Art is interpretive and it thrives in an inkling. It is make believe which entices us to make and dares us to believe. A whimsical brush stroke of an almost imperceptible shift in the breeze causes a change to the canvas of clairvoyance as the story transforms to an entirely new possibility. A hundred pages might be worth less than a hunch, and an instinct may give birth to an idea.
It has been said that the !Kung people from the Kalahari desert were some of the very best trackers on the planet. Tracks and signs in the schoolroom of the sand would be remembered long into their adult life, and their powers of observation would be play acted through a theatrical pursuit of their prey. Upright postures with extended necks would be adopted for taller animals, whilst their gait would change for those with noses close to the ground. The tracker who understood the animal most may well have specialized in the following of that animal. It seemed it was much easier to find them if one was already in their skin.
Perhaps they practiced empathic tracking?
Seeing with the eyes of the other.
Hearing with the ears of the other.
Feeling with the heart of the other.
We speak often of the crucial ingredient of connection in Leadership. These people have taken it a sandy step further for centuries.
They know that connection is essential for Life.
Every time I go tracking I learn more – primarily about myself, and this time it was a stark and humbling lesson. I was with Darryl Dell, one of the finest guides in the world and we were taking a tracking group for a walk on a Tuesday morning.
Since my very first tracking experience I have loved this challenge of the meeting of the left and right hemispheres of logic and imagination – this blend between science and art which is tracking. The small tracks hold as much allure as the big ones, and when we encountered a perfect set of chameleon tracks beautifully embedded in the early morning sand, I was thrilled. Thrilled because I knew this track, and also because they were so distinct, maybe we’d find the actual creature and remove all doubt.
When Darryl said he could see the animal, I intensified my gaze into the branches and stems of the young silver cluster leaf. Flapped necked chameleons can be pretty small and highly camouflaged, so I inspected every folded leaf from every angle and most importantly in this case, a dangerous amount of confidence.
By this stage Darryl was looking at me rather quizzically, and had asked whether I had seen it yet?
Doubt had not yet entered my mind and as a consequence my doggedness grew in a determination to get the right result, and even when Renata, a delegate who had taken to tracking like a frightened and sunburned hippo takes to water, shrieked with delight and pointed to the base of the bush, my first thought was:
“No ways, it can’t be.”
Well, it was. There, right up against the main small trunk, and still half covered by grass in the sand was the tiniest of Leopard Tortoises – no bigger than an original Lions match box!
In those few seconds I learned enough to fill a field guide. Maybe even a field guide to life?
If you follow the tracks of the animal, you will find the animal who left the tracks.
There is no getting around this. No matter how much you want to find a chameleon, if you’re tracking a tortoise, you will find a tortoise. Pease apply your own lessons here, you may find there are many.
Be clear about what you are tracking, otherwise you end up looking in the wrong places.
Tortoises do not climb trees. Nor even small shrubs. Period.
Over confidence and sticking stubbornly to a set of beliefs may take you down an unwanted and irreversible path.
This is a bit like getting on a train bound for Cape Town and hoping you will arrive in Durban. The tracks are laid out and the journey in this case has a predetermined destination.
The newest recruit may have the best answer.
Whilst experience can be invaluable, so too can fresh eyes. They are unencumbered by the wrong experience. Sometimes thirty years of experience is not always a good thing – especially if I have been walking unaware and practicing bad habits. I have had much more than thirty years of playing golf. For a glorious month in my enjoyment of this journey I was a four handicap – I am now a twelve. Go figure!!
If my ego is attached to my outcomes, I may be in trouble.
Pretending to have seen the tortoise and then covering up my search in the branches as a quest to find a chameleon as well, would be nothing short of lying to protect my image.
Inauthenticity is not a desired trait in any Leadership book, blog or banter.
Jumping to conclusions may get me to a dead end.
A conclusion is exactly that. An end. When I do that, there is no more room for open debate, learning or exploration. The matter or lesson is concluded. Put to rest. Signed and Sealed. Right or Wrong. Black or White. Tick or Cross.
But that doesn’t happen with learning or with life. Learning doesn’t end when the school bell rings for the lesson to be over, and I’ve always been intrigued, when hearing at the end of a reading from the Bible in church at the announcement,
“Here endeth the lesson.”
Surely the learning should continue?
I wonder why no one in the thousands of years of the Bible, with its multiple authors, psalms, parables, letters, verses, chapters and books hasn’t stopped to change track and look at the difference between a finite and an infinite world?
Whilst a finite world may be measured by the number of lessons read or delivered, an Infinite world would track the impact of the learning.
And that may be never – ending.
We learn as much from our failures as we do from our successes. But only if we admit to them and own them.
I doubt whether I will make the same mistake again – not when it comes to a small tortoise track. Like a battle wound, the scar tissue of every short-gaited scratch is etched in every minute detail into the data warehouse of my left brain.
Life-long learning happens when there is space given for it to unfold.
Darryl could have told us what the track was before we’d even seen it. He could have pointed out the tiny tortoise and moved on in an effort to accumulate more ticked tracks. Pointing to each at a professional pace he might have reeled them off: Leopard, male, tick. White Rhino, white not Black, tick. Jackal, tick. Frog, tick. Thank you, see you at breakfast, tick.
Instead he gave us space to explore the avenues of our own awareness and annals of our own archives. You don’t get to this level of learning through the mere dishing out of constant lessons.
My learning from that seemingly insignificant moment with that still impossibly small tree climbing tortoise with chameleon shoes continues onwards, and if you’ve followed this far, so too will yours.
Learning is indeed a life-long journey, and the tracking of that journey is best taken with the whole brain, and as the artistic scientists of the !Kung people might remind us…
It is helped by an open heart.
Steve
