Page 47 - Dark Matter Issue5 Part II

We didn’t know he was waiting for us then, but I know it now. It has taken months to

understand this, to see pattern and Story, too often hidden by time and doubt. A deeper

understanding, one that encompasses all the years of engagement, beckons. Indigenous

people knew this realm, this dimension beyond ours, this field of knowing and being

where humans, non-humans, the spirits and earth co-exist beyond relationship.

The Great Elephant was waiting for us ...

For the next hour or two, we followed him through the valley as he grazed or hid in the

brush until he led us to the vast desert plain that all of us would cross at sundown. Just

as night was falling, he would be on his way to a water tank set aside for the Elephants

in return for the government digging wells for the Native people living there, and we

would be returning to the Lodge.

Soon after we arrived, he left the tree where he had been waiting, turned east and

meandered from place to place. At one point, he stopped, certain that we were watching

though not glancing at us, and began to twist his trunk into a strange knot that I

recognized as the gesture through which the Ambassador greeted us in 2000. He

continued contorting his trunk while we observed, moved and mystified.