The Tracker Seat

Choosing The Tracker Seat is best done without too much thought. One of those moments best just seized, if you know what I mean. Don't let the photograph fool you. Fourth row at the twelve screen cinema they just opened down the street, being all still and situated in front of a cool view that's doing all the work for you it ain't. No popcorn or diet coke. Being in The Tracker Seat is more strap yourself to one of those big exercise balls and shove it over the edge of a thorn filled ravine, with um really big spiders and stuff, oh and lions in the bushes as you careen down the hill. And you have RESPONSIBILITIES.

Keep your eyes glued to the immediate foreground and notice, while bouncing in forward motion at say 30 miles per hour, a shadow of a pawprint barely making a dent in the dirt while ignoring for sanity's sake the Golden Orb spider the size of your fist. Keep your ears attuned to some frequency that allows the huff of some wild thing to cut through the roar and clatter of an under-serviced volunteer-outfit-in-Africa hand-me-down jeep engine. And breathe, through your nose please, to pick up any musky stink, and discern if that stink is carnivore, or third-day safari socks.

It is also peaceful in a way that only being in the wide open, your line of site unedited by anything man or manmade, while enjoying the completely underrated comfort of being in a chair, with padding and a seatbelt, can be.

I chose The Tracker Seat one time in Africa. Barely felt I'd earned the right just yet. Crazy and sort of dangerous that it is, it is a coveted position. You won't get the chance if you pay the big bucks for one of those tourist safaris. Liability and such. Volunteer in some back-bush preserve and you might. Don't think. Take it.