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Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu
A provocative look at the vital connection between human beings, the natural world and meaningful knowledge.
While tracking a lion with a Samburu headman and then, later, eluding human assailants who may be tracking him, Jon Turk experiences people at their best and worst. As the tracker and the tracked, Jon reveals how the stories we tell each other, and the stories spinning in our heads, can be moulded into innovation, love and co-operation — or harnessed to launch armies. Seeking escape from the confusion we create for ourselves and our neighbours with our think-too-much-know-it-all brains, Jon finds liberation within a natural world that spins no fiction.
Set in a high-adventure narrative on the unforgiving savannah, Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu explores the aboriginal wisdoms that endowed our Stone Age ancestors with the power to survive – and how, since then, myth, art, music, dance, and ceremony have often been hijacked and distorted within our urban, scientific, oil-soaked world.
While tracking a lion with a Samburu headman and then, later, eluding human assailants who may be tracking him, Jon Turk experiences people at their best and worst. As the tracker and the tracked, Jon reveals how the stories we tell each other, and the stories spinning in our heads, can be moulded into innovation, love and co-operation — or harnessed to launch armies. Seeking escape from the confusion we create for ourselves and our neighbours with our think-too-much-know-it-all brains, Jon finds liberation within a natural world that spins no fiction.
Set in a high-adventure narrative on the unforgiving savannah, Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu explores the aboriginal wisdoms that endowed our Stone Age ancestors with the power to survive – and how, since then, myth, art, music, dance, and ceremony have often been hijacked and distorted within our urban, scientific, oil-soaked world.
- GenresEnvironment
297 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2021
6 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Jon Turk
26 books21 followersJON TURK is the author of twenty-five environmental and earth science text books and two previous adventure travel books. He is a world-class adventurer who, in addition to his kayak expeditions, has climbed big walls in the Canadian Arctic, mountain biked across the Mongolian Gobi, and skied high peaks throughout the world. He writes frequently for many different magazines and alternates his time between Fernie, British Columbia and Darby, Montana.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 25, 2022
Jon Turk’s Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu is a bittersweet story of his experience with an unfathomably brave yet generous tribe in a remote, drought-stricken area of northeast Kenya. Ostensibly the author went to the Samburu to participate in a lion conservation study, but the book becomes an examination of the incongruity between the dire poverty of the Samburu herders, the ever-present threat of attack they face by murderous militias, and the opulence of Western technological societies.
Turk makes us confront the immense divide between the first and third world, and it isn’t just to make us feel sorry for those poor, faraway people. He shows us how the causes of third-world suffering are easily brought to bear on us privileged folks. Turk weaves in anthropology and evolutionary biology to explain how we humans got to this point. Time and again Turk comes back to humans’ noisy “think-too-much-know-it-all brains,” which make us susceptible to mythologies created by populist manipulators asking us to embrace fear and conflict. With today’s technology, this could have fearsome, unthinkable consequences. And yet that same brain made us marvellously successful by evolutionary standards.
Contrasting the day-to-day challenges of survival in the Samburu with the immense wealth of the few makes for a beautiful but sobering read. I highly recommend this walk through a different world.
Turk makes us confront the immense divide between the first and third world, and it isn’t just to make us feel sorry for those poor, faraway people. He shows us how the causes of third-world suffering are easily brought to bear on us privileged folks. Turk weaves in anthropology and evolutionary biology to explain how we humans got to this point. Time and again Turk comes back to humans’ noisy “think-too-much-know-it-all brains,” which make us susceptible to mythologies created by populist manipulators asking us to embrace fear and conflict. With today’s technology, this could have fearsome, unthinkable consequences. And yet that same brain made us marvellously successful by evolutionary standards.
Contrasting the day-to-day challenges of survival in the Samburu with the immense wealth of the few makes for a beautiful but sobering read. I highly recommend this walk through a different world.
August 8, 2021
Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu is a calling for expanding our natural wisdom to transform the way we experience life, as individuals and communities.
What I love about Jon’s message is its simplicity. The fact that stories have united and separated us for ages is very clear, what we don’t see is that stories are the realm of our “think-too-much-know-it-all brains” — as Jon likes to say. However, he suggests there is another obvious way of experiencing life that recognizes that there is no separation between you, me, and the natural world.
This is a must-read book for anyone who is ready to explore the magic of true living!
It was a wonderful experience to have had a conversation with Jon Turk during a podcast interview! His presence, wisdom, and clarity reflected his commitment to changing lives!
What I love about Jon’s message is its simplicity. The fact that stories have united and separated us for ages is very clear, what we don’t see is that stories are the realm of our “think-too-much-know-it-all brains” — as Jon likes to say. However, he suggests there is another obvious way of experiencing life that recognizes that there is no separation between you, me, and the natural world.
This is a must-read book for anyone who is ready to explore the magic of true living!
It was a wonderful experience to have had a conversation with Jon Turk during a podcast interview! His presence, wisdom, and clarity reflected his commitment to changing lives!
December 28, 2021
The title is a bit misleading, and if you are expecting a Jon Turk adventure story of old, this is not it.
“Tracking Lions…” is an interesting, but often rambling and repetitive, exploration on the evolution of mankind, looking through the lens of storytelling as the defining trait of our species.
Despite frequent rants about our oil thirsty economy, the author leaves his own admission of a lifetime of worldwide travel to the last few pages. I felt it was almost an afterthought, and not given the importance this topic deserves. How can we justify world travel via oil guzzling jets, with and our human DNA-driven desire to explore the world beyond our doorstep? This is a topic that I often struggle with myself, and I wish it had been given more of a place of prominence in the book.
“Tracking Lions…” is an interesting, but often rambling and repetitive, exploration on the evolution of mankind, looking through the lens of storytelling as the defining trait of our species.
Despite frequent rants about our oil thirsty economy, the author leaves his own admission of a lifetime of worldwide travel to the last few pages. I felt it was almost an afterthought, and not given the importance this topic deserves. How can we justify world travel via oil guzzling jets, with and our human DNA-driven desire to explore the world beyond our doorstep? This is a topic that I often struggle with myself, and I wish it had been given more of a place of prominence in the book.
March 13, 2022
Beware!
Beware—"Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu" is likely to capture your imagination enough to keep you up reading long past when you should be turning off your bedside lamp because you have to get up early in the morning to go to work, class or the office. Jon Turk takes the reader to where mythology intersects with science. It is an explanation of about nearly everything regarding the human condition and the stories that have led us to this important juncture we are at now. That place where the big brained ape must urgently decide to make a radical shift in consciousness, and must include the entire eight billion of us.
Beware—"Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu" is likely to capture your imagination enough to keep you up reading long past when you should be turning off your bedside lamp because you have to get up early in the morning to go to work, class or the office. Jon Turk takes the reader to where mythology intersects with science. It is an explanation of about nearly everything regarding the human condition and the stories that have led us to this important juncture we are at now. That place where the big brained ape must urgently decide to make a radical shift in consciousness, and must include the entire eight billion of us.
December 13, 2021
A fascinating and insightful account of the African savannah, the Samburu people, and the relationship between the stories we tell, the environment, and our connection to the earth. I loved this book.
April 25, 2022
A wonderful story on the basis of storytelling and the role it plays in both the formation and fabric of our society. A classic Jon Turk novel of adventure with additional layers of philosophy and pondering
November 29, 2022
A fascinating and insightful account of the African savannah, the Samburu people, and the relationship between the stories we tell, the environment, and our connection to the earth. I loved this book.
January 19, 2022
a great book.. makes you think. a must read along with its companion book the ravens gift.
November 4, 2021
Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu, isn’t about lions. Jon Turk has written a long list of books that offer readers the deeper message behind the adventure story. In this, his most recent book, he explores how our ancestral need for story and myth helped create the tribalism that kept us alive. He also offers a convincing—and well documented—argument for how that same deep desire for story and tribe has gotten us into the environmental and political mess we are in today.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews