Part 1_Episode_4: Seek out characters to become one 


Story Hunter episode four -  Seek out characters to become one.


Bakkes was a big man with long fiery red hair that matched the Damaraland desert in Namibia at sunset.


I have found, as a story hunter, that remote places are often the natural habitat of wild characters, both human and animal. Bakkes had one arm after being attacked by, not one, but two crocodiles while working as a ranger in the Kruger National Park. The first time I ever saw Bakkes he was standing at the counter of a remote bar in the Namibian hinterland. That last wild place of desert rock and stone. Bakkes looked in his natural habitat, and he was to be our guide. When he saw us enter the bar, he picked up a pint of Namibian beer off the counter, and began to down it while holding us in his gaze. As we got closer, he picked up a second point and sank it like a homesick mole. He then turned to us with gusto and stuck out his good arm. “Hi”, he said in a booming voice.” I'm Chris Bakkes.” The group introduced themselves. Hi, I'm Jim. I'm Steve. I'm David. I'm Mark. I'm Sarah. I'm Andre. I'm Tessa. “Nice to meet you guys. Just let me make sure I have this right. Jim, Steve, David, Mark, Sarah, Andre Tessa”. After a quick litre of beer. Bakkes was as sharp as a whip. It was a really good trick. A one eyed Jack Russell ran yapping up to Chris and he scooped the dog out with his meaty arm. “This is Tier.” Tier is the Afrikaans word for Tiger. “This is Tier, my guard dog,“ said Bakkes holding the small dog in his hand. What happened to his eye? Someone asked. Well said cuz he bent my arm off. So I poked his eye out. Chris followed this with a booming laugh. I'll never forget that first five minutes with Bakkes. He bit my arm off so I poked his eye out a classic line - it was gold. You could feel an adventure in the air anytime you were near Bakkes. He was definitely someone stories happen around. Everything about him felt earned. The wild had left storied scars on him. The desert seemed to have etched itself into his skin. I wanted to sit by a fire with him and hear all the stories. 


Finding characters in life is becoming harder. As life becomes more homogenized, more captured by social media. Characters almost always have found their own uniqueness and a path to express it. They seem to fit what they're doing. They know what lights them up. They know what they have to offer. And almost always, they know how to live in a way that is unique to them. 


Our narratives feel so mundane nowadays, even our breakout stories are shared on social media until they become templates of van life or global nomading or copies of some kind of Eat, Pray, Love odyssey. The world is outside in. Even when we're trying to step off a path our imagination is already infused with ideas from the outside about how that should look. Bakkes, Now Bakkes - he was inside out. He liked the wild. He liked beer. He liked the desert. At night around the fire, he would sing rock and roll songs, talking Guns and Roses, ACDC. He was an avid reader with a depth of understanding about the ecology of the desert. Bacchus - his life reflected his essence, he was authentic. 


It's an interesting question, right? How much does my daily external life reflect the inner essence of who I am. When you close that gap, you're naturally becoming more yourself, and almost always more unique. Fitting in is somehow the opposite of belonging. 


On one of the days Chris led the group to a murky swamp of hard mineralized water in a rocky crevice of the desert. “This is a great place to swim,” he said stripping down naked as he spoke to the group. “You guys are gonna love it.” It was hard to be enthused about a swimming hole by a man who had been attacked by two crocodiles. He then charged off into the murky pool. His vigour made us follow him. I had heard Chris's crocodile attack story long before I met him. It was one of those famous stories in guiding circles. But he told us anyway.. And I'll tell you what he told us. 


On a hot Sunday in the Kruger National Park. He had jumped into a waterhole that had a croc in it, that Chris had watched for months. The croc would lie on the far bank day in and day out. On this particular day, when he dived in the croc was lying on the far bank, and there was lots of beer involved. Chris jumped into the water, watching the crock he knew lived in the dam. He had seen it for months there. He was watching the croc on the far bank. When he was grabbed by a second croc that he did not know was in the waterhole. He managed to fight it off and make it to the shore, where just as he exited the water, the first croc from across the water, grabbed him and took his arm off. Chris managed to survive. And he was one of those wilderness guys whose momentary lapse of judgment had produced a lifetime of better judgment. 


We live in a society obsessed with highs, reaching optimization, presenting success. Characters have almost always made the kind of mistakes that wake you up. Characters have been down and found a way to come through their own failings of judgment. Characters have character because they are forged. Bakkes was a truly brilliant wilderness guide. He showed me how a guide's personality and essence could radically enhance the expedition. For a long time at Londolozi Game Reserve, where I live and work, we've had a strange recruitment policy. We've always hired characters, not credentials. You can train a person to run safaris, but you cannot train character. And almost always what makes for a vibrant and original space is that it has characters in it. Personal uniqueness makes for a kind of group originality. 


So where does this leave a story hunter? Well, for one, we must learn from our characters, and become inside out people. I call this actively emerging the gift. And it's a skill that comes from a quality of awareness. 


Almost always, when I coach people, over time, we start to discover a personal uniqueness that wants to emerge. In order for this to happen, one has to enter into a disciplined state of attention. You actually have to be paying attention to your inner world enough to know what's there. The first part is almost always subtractive, a shedding of sorts. The slow realisation that so much of how you think you have to be is a series of learned and conditioned responses. For example, from the time I was young, I was told I was responsible for people's well being. This was probably normal-ish, for a kid growing up in a family of safari guides. 
But that responsibility exaggerated, became a horrible overbearing sense of responsibility for people, for people and experiences that needed to be shed. So a more spacious presence could take its place. If you're looking for your conditioning, look for stress, and then ask, what am I believing right now? There you'll find something worth looking at. I was always believing that everywhere I was I was responsible for everything going on, which is an incredibly controlling place to be. It needed to be shed. The next phase is paying attention to subtleties, what grabs your attention: the people, the places, what energizes you? The things you dream about, the people you feel naturally curious about. What naturally makes your energy field expansive? The old adage of notice what you notice in creative work, they call it finding your voice. In native cultures, they call it human making. In ceremonial spaces, people learn to be themselves and in so doing almost always, there is a way that something unique that they have to offer begins to present itself. A gift of singing, cooking, healing hands, organising, supporting, leading - it emerges. 


The way to truly become someone who can fall in step with life's true characters is to become one. You cannot hunt the unicorn, you must become the unicorn. To become a compelling character, you must find your own essence and express it, put together your own weird internal venn diagram and then start to express it out into the world.


Almost always when I find myself in the presence of a true character, it has been because I've been following some strange internal pull that has somehow connected me to my gift. Part of how I found Bachus was because I said yes to going on a Namibian cycling tour through the desert, because I heard that there might be a chance to track a desert black rhino. I was following my own love of tracking and it pulled me into a situation where I could meet a Bachus.


There is good reason to find characters and in so doing become one. Often reality conforms to what we imagine is possible from life and for ourselves. Characters almost always have a different worldview, and are often world class in an unusual field. What seems impossible to you is simple to them, in a different field. Making a million dollars may seem impossible to your average, let's say waiter or server, while being totally normal, to your run of the mill, finance bro.  Writing a book, growing a garden, learning to surf, making a movie - all of these are easy to someone. When you spend time with a character who has mastered a state, your own sense of what is truly possible is expanded. We create, weirdly, what we normalise as possible. It's the 100 monkey theory and the four minute mile. Characters help you imagine a world of possibility for yourself. 


So you need to cultivate your own inner world. Build your life from the inside out. Notice what you are naturally pulled towards and you will find yourself cast as a character who lives amongst the unique characters of the world. Isn't that an interesting quest? To become a character who finds characters. If you do that, you will radically expand your sense of what's possible. All the different ways there are to live and you will be a story hunter.