Musings from safari
Earlier this summer, I had the incredible experience of taking a “bucket list” trip to South Africa with my family. In a lifetime of memorable travel, I have referred to a handful of my adventures as “a trip of a lifetime.” Until further notice, I am going to crown this one “the trip of a lifetime.”
Every day we saw the sun set, almost every day the sun rise. Nearly every meal was experienced in a space with open walls. Six of our days were spent on safari, which meant that we were out and about in an open air jeep for three hours every morning and three hours every afternoon/early evening. And what an “out and about” it was — up close and personal with Mother Nature in her bio-diverse, gob-smacking splendor.
We marveled at the improbability of the giraffe, the elegance of the leopard, the sheer magnitude of a pack of elephants, the iridescence of the birds. The rhinos appeared to be from a different epoch and on and on. On the one hand, it was very exotic, like I had landed on another planet. On the other, I experienced myself as a part of the tapestry of it all. I felt awed, humbled, blessed and heartbroken by the fragile beauty of life on this planet.
Our guides fed us a steady stream of information as we tracked and observed the animals. The elephants are matriarchal, and when there are too many members of the herd for the alpha female to manage, a portion of the herd branches off peacefully with another female leader. The giraffes form and re-form loose social groups. The alpha impala male creates a large harem of females and fights off all other male suitors (even when there appears to be plenty of females). A rhino family group will take in an orphan from another family. The baboons torture adolescents who try to leave the pack. The meerkat colony behaves as a cooperative community. The lions will kill a leopard in their territory to cut down on predator competition (even when there appears to be plenty of prey for all of them). The wild dogs hunt for the benefit of the female who is denning — they return to her and regurgitate their food so that she can have the strength to care for the young pups.
A spectrum of adaptive behavior, as well as physicality, spread out across the landscape.
As I was taking it in, I contemplated how the range of the animal behaviors and adaptations were reflected in our species and the energies of life on the planet — and how we are not separate from these instinctual patterns and energies. We are a part of all of it and all of it is a part of us. I believe consciousness exists in all living things and I don’t pretend to understand the level of that consciousness. I do understand that, we as humans have enough consciousness to know that we are conscious. What a gift — that we get to contemplate our true nature, multidimensional reality, the existence of free will, the paradoxes of the universe. We can co-create our reality through meaning-making and an openness to the dynamism of life. We have the opportunity to participate in our own personal and collective evolution.
“We are moving through unconscious evolution through natural selection to conscious evolution through choice.”
— visionary and futurist, Barbara Marx Hubbard
I also got to thinking about perception. As we were gazing at a herd of zebra, someone in our party asked our guide: “Why zebras? You would think those markings would be a shout out to their prey.” Our veteran guide informed us that the black and white stripes of the zebra, so eye catching to us, are effective camouflage to the lions because of the way they see the world in light and shadow. How the lions (and other predators or very large vegetarians) perceive us is a relevant line of inquiry that frequently comes up when people see the photos. The lions (at least these lions) who have lived on a game reserve and know the drill, do not perceive us (nine people in a motorized vehicle) as prey. This is most fortunate, as we certainly could be. The guides believe that they see us as one organism: an amalgam of each of our scents and shapes, a hunk of metal, the smell of gasoline and the sound of an engine (whispers and camera shutters) all wrapped up into something they know is there … but have learned to see as unthreatening at a certain distance. For me, this underscored the realization that there are a multitude of perspectives on reality and ours (as a species or as an individual) is not a singular truth.
Michael Pollen, in his new book, “How to Change Your Mind” has also been contemplating this:
“Another trippy thought experiment is to try to imagine the world as it appears to a creature with an entirely different sensory apparatus and way of life. You quickly realize that there is no single reality out there waiting to be faithfully and comprehensively transcribed.”
It serves us to cultivate the ability to hold multiple perspectives (in our internal life and in our environment) — it’s a developmental accelerator for empathy, creativity, problem solving, transformation and more. Focusing, by the way, is one practice that promotes and nurtures this capacity.
For me (the magnificence of the animals notwithstanding), one of the most striking and enduring stories from South Africa is from the plant world. Our last stop was in the semi-arid Kalahari desert. Our guide, Kyle, was a 30 year old natural science enthusiast who (I realized after two days) has a photographic memory. He could expound on just about anything. (His most passionate passion was birds.) But he was well-versed in any subject that arose.
As we were watching a giraffe munching on the leaves of a tall tree, someone asked how the tree fared under those circumstances. Kyle prefaced his story with “You are going to think I am on psychedelics, but this is real.” (He need not have worried with me!) The tree, he explained, after being chewed on for a bit, begins to alter its chemistry so that its leaves start to taste bitter and less appetizing to the giraffe. The giraffe then moves off of that tree, thereby not eating enough of its leaves to do harm. And not only does the tree have the natural intelligence to protect itself in this way, it also sends out a signal to the trees around it, so that they can protect themselves by not being as tasty. The giraffe keeps moving and the process repeats itself throughout the landscape. I find this example of biological intelligence and interconnectivity to be inspiring and expanding, as it deepens my reverence for the mystery of life. And, I invite you to chew on it for a while!
Many Blessings,
Cathy