Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy - [BONUS] Boyd Varty - 40 Days and 40 Nights

Starting point is 00:00:00 In the midst of the worldwide quarantine, my friend Boyd Vardy decided to begin an adventure he has been considering for a long time, a 40-day and 40-night stay in the African wilderness. I'm releasing this short conversation with Boyd to peak your interest in his daily dispatches. He'll be taking short audio, journal-like recordings and sharing them with the world as he goes. As of today, there are several that you can listen to by subscribing to the Track Your Life podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Please enjoy this short chat with my friend Boyd Vardy and check out Track Your Life. So Boyd, you're doing one of the most interesting things, or about to set off on one of the most interesting things of anybody that I know in this strange state of quarantine that we're in in the world. I'd love for you to begin by just describing exactly what it is you're about to do. And then I want to pick apart the whys, the hows, the whens, and all the fun aspects of this, because I've got to admit I'm a little jealous.

Starting point is 00:00:52 Sure, Manuel. I'm about to embark on 40 days and 40 nights alone in the wilderness at Londa Losey. So this is literally the last night that I'll be in the camp and then I head out early tomorrow morning. Where are you staying? So there are two old tree houses on the property and I'm going to be staying at one of these tree houses that happens to be next to the river. I decided it's still summer. It's pretty hot. So it's a perfect spot.

Starting point is 00:01:18 It's up in a beautiful ebony tree above the river. You could imagine it like a kind of, it's a wooden deck suspended in the tree. And being on a wooden deck, being up in a tree, it makes sleeping a lot more comfortable at night. because you don't have the heat of being in a tent and you don't have to keep watch and worry about something dragging you away. I know this wasn't the reason you're doing it, but I think you just found this quote. Can you share the origin of the word quarantine that you were just telling me about? Sure. I mean, it has felt like a moment in time. Originally, I've always wanted to do this. It's something, and I've done versions on it. I've spent time out there with other people. I've

Starting point is 00:01:52 spent time by myself, but I've never had 40 days and 40 nights or six weeks. really ever on the schedule. I haven't been able to get that time. And now with what's happened in the world, it was scheduled to start in the winter on July 6th, but it just feels like everything has now lined up for it to begin on the 1st of April. And strangely, in the midst of this really weird time we're in, the word quarantine originates from the Venetian dialect form of the Italian, and I'm going to butcher this a bit. Quaranta journe, meaning 40 days. And there's obviously this archetypal number. it's the time that Jesus went into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights to be alone. In various literature, there are over 40,000 accounts of various people at some stage

Starting point is 00:02:41 feeling a pull to go and be alone in nature. And so the kind of the core of the idea is I've always wanted to go and try and understand that experience from inside of it. And so to go and put myself alone in the natural world and to just kind of watch what happens to my state of being, watch what happens to my thought pattern, watch what happens to my body, just be immersed and be paying attention inside of that immersion. Can you say a little bit more about your history with this idea? You say you've always kind of wanted to do this. Where did that begin? What are some of the, you know, you mentioned the very famous Jesus is 40 days and 40 nights in the

Starting point is 00:03:18 wilderness. What are some of the other personal inspirations that made you so interested in doing something like this. You know, I grew up around a lot of people who, to them, the natural world was church. And there was something, from the time I was very young, I was aware that there was something in the symbology of what wilderness means. When we go into wilderness, it affects us in very fundamental and primal ways. And I was exposed to people who would describe how that encounter with a wild place changed something inside of them. It helped them get in touch with themselves in a different way. And then if you look back through the mystical encounters, the most famous one is Jesus going into the desert. And I've been thinking a lot about what he was doing while he was out

Starting point is 00:04:01 there. He was definitely having encounters with his own psyche. My teacher, Byron Katie, who is probably the person I feel spiritually the deepest affinity to, after she had her awakening experience, her shift in consciousness, she started just walking out into the desert around Barstow and just going to be alone out there. And then there's various things. other accounts, another famous one that has always run really deep for me is the account of St. Francis. Here is this guy who is born to wealth in a rich merchant's family and at a certain stage something starts to pull him and he discards the life that was ordained for him to go and be alone and quiet in nature. And the thing that strikes me about it is here's a guy who

Starting point is 00:04:47 renounced everything to go be alone in nature who to this day is still the number of one economic driver for the entire region of a Sisi. So something ironic sort of happened. And what I mean is there a kind of energy came to him when he went out there. And in my reading, I've been reading a lot of the mystical accounts and I've been trying to prepare myself for it, although I feel terribly mentally undercooked right now because this was meant to be happening in a couple of months. I'm just kind of going because it feels like the moment where the world is in quarantine,

Starting point is 00:05:18 in solitude, isolation. but one of the key kind of things to try and do as I understand it is one, I have to give up my idea of what the experience should be so that the experience can take me. And the other thing is to give up trying to know the wilderness so that I can be known by the wilderness. And that's where it gets a little bit interesting. The feeling, as I understand it reading the accounts of St. Francis and these other mystics, the feeling of being known by nature is the thing that, really starts to create a different kind of relationship with it. And inside of that feeling of

Starting point is 00:05:56 being known, then comes a feeling of belonging and a feeling of yourself in a different way. These things point to them. I don't exactly know what I'm trying to shift into, but that's what the process is. And there's pointers in the mystical accounts, but there's nothing concrete. You've got to go and have the experience. I love to talk about just the boring logistics. There's a book that I read. I think you and I both read about this guy. who lived alone on a Pacific island for something like 20 or 30 years. And the book was not philosophical or spiritual at all. It was mostly about building chicken runs and planting seeds and just very simple basic things.

Starting point is 00:06:34 And I've always found those things fascinating. So I'd love to hear just a bit about how you actually will prepare, eat, sleep. The very brass tack simple stuff is fascinating to me for what you'll do in this treehouse. Yeah, I mean, we've had such great conversations exploring that process. Okay, there's some things that I should say. I'm not going for a survival, bear grills. I'm going to just be alone out there. So I'm taking some dry goods with me.

Starting point is 00:06:59 I have a trunk that locks because baboons, if I leave it open, will get into it. So I have a kind of a metal trunk that locks. I have sweet potatoes. I have some fruit. I have raisins. I have mangoes and nuts and those sorts of things. So I have dry goods. And then I have a type of cornmeal porridge that is the staple that everyone eats out.

Starting point is 00:07:19 here in South Africa. And you can pretty much survive for weeks on that. So I have that food. I have a kettlebell. I put a good mattress up in the tree house. I have firewood. And actually what I did was I took a fairly nice cushioned chair out there because I want a really nice chair to sit in for meditation.

Starting point is 00:07:39 So it's very rudimentally set up. The site of the treehouse is absolutely beautiful. And then the way that I see it rolling out is that there will be, every day there will be practices. so there will be yoga, meditation. Those would be the core ones. I'm someone who always does Byron Katie ThoughtWorks, so I'll do thought work.

Starting point is 00:07:58 And I think of that as kind of like the in-camp practices. I'm taking a kettlebell based on a conversation that we had together because I also like the idea of being able to swing something heavy around in the camp. And then the goal is to get into a very simple state inside of the camp of doing your practices, being mindful in everything you do, cooking very simple food for yourself, taking time to just be really quiet and contemplate, start to become aware of the animals around the camp and that feeling of being in tune with the environment around you.

Starting point is 00:08:28 So that's sort of like how I see camp sort of duties and keeping the place tidy, getting the food well cooked, getting the practice as well there. And that's kind of like duties and things around the camp. And then there will be what I think of as expeditions. So every day, one of the other things that I want to do is I'm trying to get a black belt in tracking. and I'm probably like a low-level brown belt, maybe like a high-level purple belt when I've

Starting point is 00:08:53 been away for a while. So I also want to spend hours out of the camp every day just following my curiosity and trying to cut tracks of the multitude of animals that live at Londa Lodi and then just spend hours in that following mentality and in that following state. And that in itself is a kind of focused, concentrated, meditative attention. It's like kind of reading something complicated. And so I see myself inside of those two practices primarily. And then the other thing that we've spoken about is you wake up at half-past four in the morning.

Starting point is 00:09:24 You can do yoga. You can do an hour of breath work. You can swing the kettlebell 200 times. You can go out and track a line for three hours. And you can come back to your camp and it's 11 o'clock. And the day still lies ahead of you of just you. So there's this relationship with time I can feel already changing. Some of the scope of the time, six weeks alone, some of it starts to get, it starts to make me apprehensive.

Starting point is 00:09:48 And then underneath the apprehension, there's also this incredible excitement, six weeks to just go into nature and do whatever I want. So I'm feeling both of those places at the moment. In the past, when you've done this, I know you've done it for some number of days. How quickly does your psyche start to change? I think one of the most interesting things about what you're going to embark on is just strange questions or things that you'll encounter. which basically nobody in the world ever gets to do. I don't know anybody that's done something like this. Say a little bit about your earlier experiences with some solitude,

Starting point is 00:10:22 how quickly your mindset changes and in what ways it changes. It's fast, Patrick. I think you remember when we were together out here, I kept talking about the Londalosie Time Walk. And man, you go out there for a day by yourself. No one talking to you, nothing stimulating you in the way that we are normally stimulating, email, something you have to do, things start to open up very, very quickly.

Starting point is 00:10:48 And your relationship with time change is fast. So I can tell you in the first three days is what I would think of as like a transitory phase. And in fact, Aboriginal people say modern culture is three days deep. And the minute you get through those first three days, you start to enter into something different. And it's even weird stuff that starts to change like not looking in a mirror at all. All the headspace that is taken up by just generally having to appear in the world and deal with people, that's gone.

Starting point is 00:11:16 Then any kind of social stuff you have to do to show up in the world, that's gone. So already huge things are happening. Then you're not talking. So all of the energy that goes into just, hey, will you pass me that? Hey, can you get that? Hey, has anyone thought about this? That's gone. Then external stimulus that we just keep in touch with, whatever, the crap that soaks up our attention.

Starting point is 00:11:38 Well, that's gone. So immediately just those things, and you aren't really yet into contemplation, and you haven't even really started to fully switch into being very attuned to nature. That's almost like the shedding phase before the tune in phase. So it happens fast. And then between three days and ten days, you go into a totally fundamentally different state. And then beyond that is where the real exploration starts. What, if anything, are you most fearful of? For me, the natural world stuff is, I'm great with that.

Starting point is 00:12:12 I love that. What are we all most afraid of being with our own mind? Wherever you go, you take what you're thinking and believing with you. And so you get into a thought like, or here comes a thought, this is too long, I don't know if I can get through this, or whatever the little gremlin of the day is, or I'm lonely, or I wonder if my family is okay out there in the world, there's a dangerous, you know, a lot of businesses in trouble. We're feeling a lot of pressure in the tourism sector.

Starting point is 00:12:40 So that sort of stuff starts to happen. Byron Katie says, when you get quiet, mind happens. But that's also the opportunity because you can start to observe that and be aware of it. And then also start to attune to a whole different value system, one that is much wilder, one that is much more natural. And so the key is to stay inside of where it gets challenging with your own psyche. And I guess that's why the account of the Buddha in the grove, the account of Jesus in the caves, it's like at a certain point, your own issues start to come to you.

Starting point is 00:13:13 The patterns that you carry from totally different life will start to show up here inside of this experience. But now you have a way of being with it that you can't really run from. That's the opportunity. You and I are both huge fans of Joseph Campbell and the sort of Heroes Journey concept, which many aspects of what you're doing sort of follow that script, if you will. one of the things about the heroic concept is this returning and bringing back sort of some sort of boon or some set of learnings to the broader world. How do you think about that? Is it finding unique questions for us all to ask ourselves that we wouldn't come up with but for this kind of isolation and experience?

Starting point is 00:13:49 Is it the experience itself? How do you think about sharing what you find and learn with the world? As you're talking, one of the things that comes to mind is Campbell says when you finally become totally at one with true solitude, you meet the whole world there. There's this idea that if you can do this right, you can be alone but feel yourself in union with everything in a new way and actually shed the loneliness

Starting point is 00:14:12 that you've always carried. So I'm thinking about that. I'm also definitely thinking about I have a woman who's like a, I would say she's my coach. I talk to her when there's stuff going on for me that's difficult. And when I told her I was doing this,

Starting point is 00:14:25 she said, thank you for doing this for us. There's also this idea of one person's solitude can be everyone's solitude. And I'm also aware of being out there and trying to bring the code of nature in, trying to bring a different way of being in and then bringing that into myself, giving myself that medicine and then sharing that medicine.

Starting point is 00:14:47 So there's definitely a piece of gathering for the tribe and remembering a different way, remembering an old way. You know, the guys who I grew up around, Rennius, who you've met and Almond, and these guys grew up like this. They grew up immersed alone in nature, hunting and gathering, in tune. And so I feel if I can get myself into that, I have a consciousness that I can offer then to people.

Starting point is 00:15:09 I've been to a place that I can share so I can bring medicine from the natural world out and be a voice to people with a different way of being. Initially, this was a very selfish pursuit. This was something I wanted to do. But I'm starting to more and more realize that there could be gifts in here for myself that will hopefully translate. And anytime you experience a deeper insight, will hopefully you just become the sort of person

Starting point is 00:15:33 who, as you move through the world, that comes out of you. But I don't fully know, I don't know what it's going to be. These are things that I hope for, and I hope something takes roots that then starts to travel through me. But it's an experiment, for sure. One of the guests that I've had on the show is a woman named Priya Parker, who's written about one of my favorite books

Starting point is 00:15:52 of the last couple of years called The Art of Gathering. And one of her points is that when you're building something that brings people together, or really any event, that it starts the moment you hear about it. And sort of in the same way, I would imagine that this for you has already begun some time ago. The change in psyche once you really decided to do this isn't day one, it's day whatever, minus 100. And so I'm curious if we think about one of the things you can bring back as being questions that you would offer up for people to consider, whether or not there are questions already in this early phase of sort of mentally preparing for this, that you find interesting that you think people out there could consider an ask of themselves?

Starting point is 00:16:29 I mean, in some ways, I think that already, and they say it in native cultures too, the ceremony begins when the ceremony is called, not when you all gather in the ceremony because it starts to work on you. I've always wanted to live differently, and I've always wondered, and what I believe is that people who live differently are making different pathways of life. As someone who successfully lives a life that is different, that is authentic to them, makes a pathway. And I've been asking myself what motivates me. And I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm doing this because I feel called to it. That would be the primary question is not what you think you should do, but what is life asking of you? What is being asked of you? And that has been

Starting point is 00:17:11 the first thing. I'm realized that this is what's being asked of me in some much deeper way than me thinking, I should go and hang out in the wild by myself. Like I, in a deeper part of myself, I know that this is what is being asked right now. I don't know what the other questions are yet. I think it's like the Rilke thing. Live the question. I guess I'm hoping to come to some questions worth asking through this rather than answers. You made the point about one person's solitude could be sort of transferred to others.

Starting point is 00:17:38 It's such an interesting idea. You and I haven't talked about this yet. But I wonder if there's something that I, as your friend, could do and maybe those listening, if they so choose, could do across the 40 days as a. sort of interesting connection. I don't know what those things would be. Well, my friend up in the Hudson Valley, who's the folk singer, she's just one of those souls that a soul of the earth. And when she heard I was doing it, she said that she wants people to sign up for a day and to go out at six in the morning and find a natural spot and spend the entire day alone, unencumbered by any tech or any distractions and just go and spend the day alone together, together with me, somewhere

Starting point is 00:18:21 out there in the world, and just notice yourself through a day without doing any of the things that you do in a natural place. I love that. I'll definitely do that and I'll mull some other things. I love challenges like this where you strip things away that maybe you don't need and see what it's like without them. There's this Native American idea too that a lot of Native American scouts would practice called sit spot, which is you sit, sit. in the same spot every day for an elected period of time. I might have told you about this before. And then what happens is as you sit there, you start to build a relationship with that spot. You almost start to, you know that spot, you know the birds that are in that area, you know,

Starting point is 00:18:59 that tree squirrel where he's nesting. You get to know it, but it also gets to know you. And I think it's interesting too. I mean, one of the things that I would offer people is like, extend the time there. Don't go sit for half an hour. Go sit for five hours and don't move and notice the impulse to dive into something or notice the thing that you have to do, oh, I should say this. What's amazing is there's a certain resistance to getting out of the camp into the tree. I can feel all these things come up that I have to do this. Am I going to be away from this? What about that?

Starting point is 00:19:32 I just met this girl and whatever. There's like the mind throws up a ton of reasons why it can't be done. And that's why I know it's important to do it. Even if you go allocate your day to go spend the woods near your house or whatever, just notice how difficult that becomes. And then you go and do it and you realize you come back in the world is, the world goes on and you have something very unique. How can people follow along on this journey with you?

Starting point is 00:19:59 Okay, so, I mean, we discussed this too. You can follow, I'm going to do a daily recording. That's outside the scope of traditional retreat, but I want to do it at this time. I want to send out a voice to people who are in isolation in this weird time everywhere. And part of my craft is storytelling. I want to tell people the story as it goes along. So Apple Podcasts, anywhere you can get podcasts, it's the Track Your Life podcast with Boyd Varty.

Starting point is 00:20:23 And then you can get it Apple, Spotify, all of the platforms. And this one is obviously 40 days, but it's a track your life with Boyd Varty. And then on Instagram, you'll find all the links. And on my website, Boydvarty.com. And the landing page there is 40 days and 40 nights. And you can get it all there. And I'm going to try and do an episode a day. but in truth, one of the things that Alex, our other mutual friends said to me was,

Starting point is 00:20:45 don't go out there with a Western mindset of how to do this. Go out there, fall into the rhythm of the place, let nature's rhythm guide you. And if I get out there and I want to fall asleep for two days, while I feel compelled to go on a two-day walking mission away from the camp, I'm going to do what I feel called to, and then the episodes will come out of that. Can you just in closing, just briefly tell that fun story from a couple days ago of the 17 lines? Oh yeah, absolutely. So in the late evening, I went out with my family. Right now, the whole of the reserve is extremely quiet because obviously there's no one coming on safari. So went out with my family and in the late evening light, just as the sun was setting, came across about 14 or 15 or 16 lines, but a big pride of lions lying on the end of the runway that is on the property where people can land their planes. And this to me is like absolute gold because I can see they're hungry. And I know that some, sometime during the night, 15 lions are going to get on the move.

Starting point is 00:21:45 And to a tracker, that's gold. You're going to have like amazing tracks the next morning. So 6 a.m. wake up really early cup of coffee. I go straight there. I get on the tracks. And I followed for maybe 35 minutes by myself. And they walk directly east. And then they cut through a beautiful open clearing.

Starting point is 00:22:02 And you could see where the grass had been pushed down where they'd been walking. And then they cut out onto a road and they turned directly west again. So they almost turned right back on themselves. And at that point, I met these two other guides who were out for the morning, a guy called James and Pete, they jumped off their vehicle and we said, okay, let's follow together. So the three of us walked for maybe four, 500 yards, and then two of these dirt roads diverged, and the one bent away from us. So there was a bend in the road, and the tracks followed the road that was bending. And we were coming around the bend, and then suddenly there maybe like 35, 40 meters ahead of us, the entire pride was walking away from us. And the two big males were walking at the back.

Starting point is 00:22:42 And we suddenly came up on them. And one of them spun around and started to growl. And the second one spun around. And he immediately put his head down and he growled intensely. And then he started bounding at us. And he must have bound like a lion can cover ground. So maybe like four or five, six meters towards us. And suddenly he was 10, 15 meters away and growling.

Starting point is 00:23:03 And then we all just stood still. I said, stand, stand, everyone stood still. And he was just lit beautifully by this golden morning light for a moment. and this intense gaze and growl. And you can just feel everyone's heartrate red line briefly. And then I saw him stop and I saw him calm down a little bit. And he basically just said, hey, you're too close. Back off me.

Starting point is 00:23:21 And we stood still. And then the minute he calmed down, we started to back away. And then he immediately relaxed and started walking down the road again. The three of us walked back to the vehicle. And I looked at these two other guides. And it's one of those things that when it's happening, it's a very intense moment. You've got to get it right. You've got to stand.

Starting point is 00:23:36 But then afterwards, you look at each other and everyone just gets this like huge, cheesy grin on their face. And there's just this feeling of that's the best cup of coffee you'll ever have in your life. Your entire biology went, wake up. What I put in my head too, because then I spent the rest of that day preparing was I can't get it wrong out there. I'm comfortable out there, but I have to remember where I am. And you just can never be complacent if you want to operate well in this environment. It's a constant mindfulness. That's also what I'm excited about it, is being in nature and being in the tracking space, it pulls you into that mindfulness. I'll keep you updated and I hope the recordings are they're going to be what they're going to be. It's an interesting

Starting point is 00:24:13 thing. Talk to yourself in a tree, but I'll try and report the story as best I can. Well, I'm so excited for you. It's been so fun talking about this idea with you over the last year and I can't wait to listen. So thanks for doing this in preparation and I'll make sure to be pushing these things out to everybody so that others can join in the journey. Thanks so much, Patrick. Really appreciate it as always.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy - [BONUS] Boyd Varty - 40 Days and 40 Nights

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