Most impalas die of old age. And most people die of old age, too.
But that’s not a very exciting story, is it?
What makes us want to bring on the lions?
Bring on the Lions
Tag: Botswana
Footprints
Our feet anchor us to the ground. Just as my Pleistocene ancestors could read the tracks of mastodons, so I now gaze down at an elephant’s prints in the dust. Her back feet are oval and her front feet round. City slicker that I am, even I can tell the direction she is going.
The sand beneath our feet is the color of a lion’s coat, studded with brittle leaf litter. Morula walks through it without making a sound. Shock-absorbing pads on the soles of her feet cushion each footstep, smother crushed leaves.
I step on a dry leaf and it crackles into powder.
The brand name of my boots imprints within the outline of my soles; a clever advertisement made with each step. All of my weight concentrates in two small points of contact with the earth, so I make deeper impressions than Morula’s footprints. Each one of my steps applies more pressure per square inch; Morula’s weight spreads over four large footpads the size of a medium pizza pan.
She can step on a snake and not kill it.
Morula lifts her foot and grains of sand roll down slope into the crater of her footprint.
Following two paths, the one beneath her feet and the one in her mind, Morula strolls on. Dust rises, a half shadow that marks her passage, before it collapses again to the ground.
There is a before and an after to each moment of our lives, paths we follow and paths we do not.
Let There be Light
From 93 million miles away, pitched straight at me, vibrating, ululating like an African cry of greeting, light from the sun hurtles towards the earth at 186,282 miles per second and eight minutes later slams into me like a jabbering, long-lost relative trying to make up for lost time. It babbles everything, all at once, into my eyes.
Our eyesight is an electro-chemical reaction to a vibrating particle-wave gushing optical information splash into my brain. I could shut my eyes to the wonder around me and be diminished. I could shut my eyes to the atrocities around me and become hardened.
By opening my eyes, I give shape to my perceptions. By opening my eyes I take responsibility for my vision, for what my eyes teach me. By opening my eyes I learn that I belong to the world, not that the world belongs to me.
Our eyes are openings into and out of our bodies. Are my eyes, as some would say, a window to my soul?
There is a cold way of seeing that clips wings and stifles our words into faint echoes. But there is also a way of seeing where the eye can be like a mouth, swallowing color, taking in the entire world with just one gulp. Just the sheer fact alone that we see color should provide enough wonder to fill our lives, should stop us in our tracks, should keep our eyes wide open, devouring everything as fast as we can choke it down, leave us slack-jawed, gasping for air.
Somewhere behind my eyes, a world exists that I yearn to inhabit, dreams that might become real if only I could imagine them with my eyes wide open.
Our Journeys are All the Same
We tell old stories in order to see anew. Each and every one of us takes the same journey from life to death, though our paths are never the same.
We begin as an explosion of infinite possibilities and then fall back upon ourselves, grabbing at some of those possibilities during our fall.
Our trajectory, which touched the very rim of life, descends toward the center, ending at zero, at what some see as a portal and others see as finality.
Falling, always falling towards the center of ourselves, the huge unknown universe within, our journeys are all the same.
Sunset at Doug & Sandi’s camp, Okavango Delta, BotswanaThe Most Useful Appendage That Ever Evolved
An excerpt from my book-in-progress:
The tip of Jabu’s trunk hovers in front of my eyes, wet with mucous, dotted with sand, nostril hairs visible.
He blows into my face, gently. I blow back, gently. We exchange breath, distillations of our own personal atmospheres, particle-swarms of changed, exchanged air, brewed though all the cells of our bodies.
My lungs fill with the fragrance of crushed leaves, with saproots and spearmint-scented bark, all lightly fermented. I think of the stagnant air that surrounds my daily life, air that is conditioned, filtered, deodorized, air that is bland. Elephant’s breath is said to cure headaches. And it just might, if I had one.
Jabu’s trunk tip investigates my right boot tip. The scents I’ve picked up while walking tumble up two seven-foot-long nostrils – nostrils surrounded by nerves, arteries, veins and a staggering array of longitudinal and transverse muscles, the world’s biggest, longest and certainly most flexible schnozz.
A trunk is the most useful appendage that ever evolved. Imagine having an arm in place of your nose, an arm long enough to reach to the top of a tree, and pluck a single leaf from its crown. Imagine having a nose with which you could rip, tear, excavate, whack, and blow bubbles. You could steal with your nose, suck on it, squeal, swat, poke and siphon with it. You could take a shower, or reach over your shoulder and scratch your back with it. You could even arm wrestle with your nose.
He chuffs, a hot gust of air directed at my feet. Wet mist covers one boot top momentarily, then evaporates.
Trunk Show
Funky jazzy trombone trunk. Snaking snorkeling vacuuming trunk. Showerhead. Backhoe. Slinky. Shimmying sucking swigging trunk. Empty pipe. Water gun. Periscope. Plucking siphoning tenacious trunk. Kazoo. Tweezers. Tentacle. Affectionate handshaking pickpocket trunk. Python. Air hose. Question mark. Whistling snorting sneezing trunk.
Breathtaking
trunk.
The Three Graces
In Greek mythology, the Charites were goddesses of charm, beauty, nature and creativity. Aglaea, “Splendor” was the youngest, Euphrosyne, “Mirth,” was the middle sister and Thalia, “Good Cheer,” the eldest. To the Romans they were known as the Gratiae, the “Graces.” Homer wrote that they were in the retinue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, pleasure and procreation. Although early depictions of the Graces occurred in marble sculptures dating from the 6th century BC and a first century fresco at Pompeii, they are more likely known by the Renaissance paintings of Botticelli, Raphael and Rubens.
In Africa, grace – the pleasure of beauty in nature – is a constant state of existence. Splendor, the youngest of the Gratiae, can be found in moments both large and small – in the turn of a head or in a long, glorious sunset.
These three impala in identical coats pause before us in a moment of easy grace. The youngest, coltish, knock-kneed, takes our breath away when she throws us a glance over her shoulder. The charm, the Charities, of fleeting beauty.
The Deadliest Animal in Africa
The deadliest animal in Africa is not a snake, nor a leopard, nor a lion – it’s the hippo, those oddly comic, rotund herbivores that sound like submerged tubas. Hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal: several hundred per year. In contrast, sharks kill only around ten people per year, worldwide.
Hippos don’t even eat the people they kill. They’re vegetarians, emerging at night from ponds and rivers to eat grass. Their beady, sherry-colored eyes don’t see well at all, but their sense of smell is acute. Males defend territory, females their calves. Both can outrun you, and you never know what might set off a 6,000 pound animal that can achieve a speed of 19 mph.
In 2002, I was traveling through the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana on a mobile camping safari. Six people in an open-sided Landcruiser focused their cameras on laid-back hippo blimps floating in a nearby pond. It was that magic half-hour before sunset when the light is golden and incredible – perfect for photographs. A short distance away a male grazed on flowers. I raised my camera.
Without warning, the hippo opened his mouth in a threat gesture, displaying his long, razor-sharp canines. A second later, he charged, head swinging side to side like a giant sledgehammer, running directly for us at a surprisingly clip, intent on slamming into our vehicle.
He was closing fast. All I could see through my camera lens were those massive incisors, as the camer’s autofocus kept singing out zzzzt zzzt, zzzzzt zzzt.
Luckily, the engine of our vehicle started without a cough and the hippo just missed our back bumper. He continued on into the bush for thirty yards before stopping to wonder where we had gone. This is the only picture I have of him, right before he charged.
Something in the Way She Moves
She is beautiful in the way many large women are beautiful. There’s something about the smooth sheen on her plump skin and the defiant stare she gives you that makes you fall in love with her, even when she’s eating.
Lions, Part One
While standing in the shade of my tent, I look out over a lagoon of bent grass to the trees at its far shoreline. A few of the stalks shiver and crosshatch in the lagoon as a mouse or grasshopper nibble at their stems. Otherwise, the grass is motionless.
I stick my hands in my pocket and scuff dust with the toe of my boot.
Something rustles in the underbrush. My sleepy senses come to full alert. It’s an ancient world out there – full of primitive memories storied at the bottom of our brains. i spot one of the honorary camp staff, a francolin, scratching around a clump of buffalo grass.
We are all afraid of something. Thembi gets in a tizzy over bees. (Imagine bees up your nose!) Eggshells horrify Jabu. For Morula, it’s the fear of not belonging.
Are elephants afraid of mice? No, but quick small things moving around their feet startle them. I consider that a prudent reaction in a world full of snakes.
My fears are primitive, hard-wired into the base of my brain from the time when humans were prey to huge fanged predators – cats as large as grizzlies, bears as large as elephants. My primitive brain is not comfortable when there are carnivores around, especially when I can’t see them.
Just last night a lion’s roar ripped me awake from a deep sleep: WAAA-AH-UNGHHH UNGH UNGH UNGH ungh ungh. . . .It ended with those deep grunts lions cough up from their bellies.
A lion’s roar can be heard for five miles. This one was incredibly loud and incredibly close, right at the edge of camp.
A cold set of fingers wrapped around my heart. In the darkness my heart threw itself repeatedly against my ribs, then slowly backed into a corner of my chest. Wary, it waited there for another roar, which never came. I knew I was safe – no lion has ever dragged someone out of a zippered tent in Botswana. But tell that to my primitive brain.
Four days ago, as I waited for Doug to pick me up from Stanley’s Camp, I had enough time before his arrival to join an evening game drive. A young couple on their first trip to Africa climbed into the tier of seats behind me in the Landcruiser and held hands. They were on their honeymoon. John, our driver and guide, explained that two other vehicles from camp had found a pride of lions on the other side of the reserve – but it was too far away for us to join them and be back before dinner.
So we headed off in the opposite direction. The young couple happily snapped photographs of zebras and impalas and baboons, giddy with the realization they were in the midst of their dream vacation. A male kudu with magnificent horns kept us in one place for nearly a half hour as the couple peppered John with questions and marveled over the graceful curl of the kudu’s horns.
At dusk John parked at the top of a knoll. With open grassland all around us it was safe to descend from the vehicle. He prepared traditional sundowners – gin and tonics – and handed them around.
As I take my first sip a lion roared in the near distance. “That’s not very far,” I said and looked at John.
“We could get lucky,” he looked at the couple with us.
They nodded, so we dashed our drinks on the ground, stashed our glasses back in their basket, and scrambled back into the Landcruiser.
Just down the road, where we’d been half an hour earlier, four large males lounged in the tall grass alongside our tracks. One lifted his chin and roared, loud enough to rattle our hearts: WAAUNNNNNNGH, UNGH, UNGH, ungh, ungh, ungh.
John sent a radio message to the other vehicles. They will detour to join us on their way back to Stanley’s.
As we watched the four males, light faded from the sky and disappeared. Blue became purple, then black. Stars appeared, each one of them a cold clear diamond.
John switched on a spotlight. A male sat in front of us, looking to our right, listening.
Spotlight off. The couple behind me murmured to each other and tried to become small blobs, rather than humans with discernable arms and legs and heads.
Spotlight on. Another male, on the left, folded into the grass, on his side, with a barely audible ufff.
Spotlight off.
A distant contact roar from one of the lions on the other side of the reserve.
Spotlight on. The male in front of us headed to a wall of brush and trees, disappeared.
Spotlight off. Shallow breaths through my open mouth. A commotion to our left.
Spotlight on. Another male, who was sitting off to our right, had moved across the road and was now rubbing the side of his face against the lion inert in the grass. When he couldn’t get his companion to rise, he also slid into the bush. A fourth lion, just up the road, ghostly in the spotlight’s shadow, followed the first two, disappeared.
Spotlight off. Silence.
Then a faint roar, in the distance again.
The hair on my arm rose before I even thought about it, as I realized that next to me the grass hissed, hisss zissh, hisss zissh, as something large walked by.
“He’s right beside me,” I whisper without moving my lips.
Spotlight on.
The inert lion was gone. John twisted his hand over his shoulder and the light caught the back of a lion just passing the front tire on my side of the vehicle. His great head swung back and forth as he walked hisss zissh, hisss zissh through the tall grass. The lion had walked around the back end of the vehicle without us hearing him until he was right next to me. The skin on the back of my neck tried to crawl up to the top of my head.
The lion turned his head toward the light. The pupils in his yellow eyes shrank to pinpoints.
He was that close. I saw his pupils shrink to pinpoints.
He huffed and swung around to follow his three brothers into the bush. I exhaled. Had I been holding my breath that long?
The two other vehicles appeared just in time to catch a glimpse of his back in waist-high grass. They followed him, bouncing through the brush, their headlights tapping the tops of trees.
John turned in his seat and looked at us. The spotlight in his lap illuminated his face and glinted from the eyes of the young couple, eyes that were now nearly the size of their open mouths.
“I think it is enough,” he said. “Let’s go to the hyena’s den before the others get there.”
ABOUT ELEPHANTS 