Page 43 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II
P. 43
As at Thula Thula, we were able to have some intimacy with the Elephants, following
one and then another in their daily life. While we recognized individual conversations or
connections as they occurred, it was only afterwards that I saw a pattern that could
appropriately be acknowledged as interconnection. We were a small group, they were a
small herd – we were with each other as distinct from observing each other. I was
hoping to be able to see the Elephants and other species for themselves, independent of
my own understanding. Over time, moments cohere into a Story, a field of vision, and it
is the human task to see it for itself.
Thula Thula had prepared me for Damaraland though I didn’t know it at the time. The
continuity of drought was an essential element. The abundance, even extravagance, of
life forms at Chobe and Mashatu seemed to deny the grave danger of climate change
caused by human activity, the on-going struggle for existence, the conflicts between the
herders and the wild as a consequence of the lack of water and resources. In
Damaraland, we remembered.
