I was in South Africa at one of those no-shoot safari camps.

We were in a truck with no

windows so you could look out and see the different animals. We drove down this narrow road
that eventually opens up to a wide plain, and there, where the treeline broke and transitioned to
small weeds and a lake, were four elephants. The man who drove the truck told me the big one
was an old male who was in heat. You could smell it in the air, a musk. Pure aggression. We
crept closer in the truck until the big one lifted his head and stared right at us. His face was
rough and scarred, each line a trophy from a battle he had won, we were told. His eyes were
black and unyielding.
We sat there for a second, the elephant looking straight at us while we sat in silence, like
that moment was a piece of glass and any movement might make it shatter in an instant. Then,
in a slow and deliberate movement, the leading elephant's foot moved forward. He began to
walk towards us. The driver started the car and started to back up. I asked him why we had to
move, anyway.
"He's not stopping", he said. And he was right.
The tusks swung from left to right as the elephant kept walking towards us, his eyes never
breaking. We continued to back up, and up, and up until we were back at the beginning of the
road. The elephant looked at us for a second more, made a powerful trumpet sound, and then
turned away. His tail swung behind him as he walked back down the road until the shadow
swallowed him and all we could hear was the occasional trumpet from far away.
That moment was one of the most powerful moments I've ever shared with an animal. In that
moment I felt so connected to that powerful beast, like I could hear his being in my mind.
------The next day we left camp early, before the sun had come up. As we drove through the
darkness, I could look out over the plains and lakes and barely make out the features. Despite
my blindness, I knew there were eyes looking back at me. The darkness held a raw vitality, a
potential. We drove and drove until the sun was well up in the sky, turning the calm blue of the
world back in to a stage of life and death, producer and consumer. We were driving along a dirt
road, our wheels kicking pale dirt into the air, when the driver suddenly stopped the truck while
turning his head to the right. I followed his gaze to look out over the yellow weeds that covered
the ground and shifted in the wind like a wave of light. I saw nothing in the wave of the plain, but
the driver kept his eyes fixed on a patch of brown. As we watched, the patch moved and
suddenly began walking toward us. It wasn't running, more like slouching toward us. Finally as it
exited the weeds I could see it was an older lion walking toward us, his haunches visible as he
casually strolled towards the caravan. He didn't stop walking even as he met the gap between
the two trucks full of people. Everyone in the truck was awestruck. We held the silence like we
were in a cathedral, and we were. That lion didn't care about the photos or the backpacks that
held extra water or that the child in the back had just sneezed. The lion represented pure life. In
his passing I could feel an immense sense of realness, like the lion was the only thing solid
about this place and we just floated in around him while he ate and slept and lived until we, like
the clouds in the glaringly hot sky, would float away to other, less solid places with other, less
solid people.