The most interesting part of the animal tracking process comes, Francois Malherbe says, when you lose the spoor. ʻYou start creating a narrative for the animal, what they call inner and outer tracking, and you tap into your intuition.ʼ Itʼs this aspect that struck a nerve for Francois. In the narrative of his own life, the watershed moments have often been guided by his intuition, as if the natural world was slowly revealing his life path.
Born in Sabi, the son of a forest manager, he moved in his matric year to the Garden Route, an experience that was unsettling but allowed him to discover elephant footprints above Jubilee Creek. ʻMy father had keys for all those gates in the reserves that say “Do Not Enter”,ʼ he explains. Cut to…
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Getaway (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2022