when i held eternity in an hour

after several days of wild [elephant] chases on foot several kms at a time - up, down, sideways - that day i got lucky.

five aaneys (elephants) - two mothers with their babies and one adult female, were not quite 100 m from me. and i was on foot, on their turf, and deliciously vulnerable. as i watched, they ate, rumbled, mud-bathed, emerged, hid, pushed, felled an erythrina, chomped on the roots and, an hour-and-a-half later, suddenly decided to walk out and up a slope. not wanting to miss a moment, i ran -- scrambling up a parallel slope - gravely and steep, slip-sliding and awkwardly [mental note: no rings on my fingers when in field] -- one eye on these giants as they sashayed easily in and out of sight. they allowed me a few more minutes of blissful aaney-watching before they had me scrambling up yet another slope, as they decided to head into a thicket on the margin of tea. as i reached the top of the second slope, i was above them, and the single adult female re-emerged to pull up grass choosily from among bushes of lantana. exhausting the supply, she eventually walked inside to join the others.

there has been little that compares with what i experienced in those hours that day. suddenly everything made sense. watching aaneys has been on my wish list for many years. but i had no idea how much a part of me it was, just how much pleasure it would actually give me, and how desperately i would want more.

there, when it was just my aaneys and i, nothing else had mattered. nothing.