One by one the elephants wake up in the soft grass beneath a shelter of palm
trees near Serena Forest. The family sleeps
here each night in this oasis within Kenya’s vast Amboseli
National Park.
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| Photo: Helen Nash/IFAW |
As the sun rises to illuminate the park, the matriarch steps
in front of the curtain of trees and picks a destination across the park. Today
it will be a wetland formed after last month’s two rainy days, the runoff still
filtering through Kilimanjaro’s underground rivers and springs. They’ll spend the
morning eating and drinking and the afternoon napping.
The family slowly gathers and then sets out together. Their
steps are deliberate, as if each is carefully chosen.
We follow in the footsteps of the giants. Their dusty
impressions are deep, but the elephants never look back to view them, nor
forward but to calibrate their direction. Their focus is in the present, on
keeping the unit together, caring for the young, observing the landscape for
threats and opportunities.
They reach the wetland and spend hours chest deep in water, grasping huge tufts of grass with their trunks and then pushing sideways with their tusks to rip the clumps out at the roots. Their trunks are as graceful as they are powerful, and they carefully curl the green bunches into their waiting mouths and munch on them with loud, savoring chews.
Soon the sun has passed over the great mountain and begins
its afternoon descent. Their palmy oasis beckons again and the family begins
moving in great and slow steps towards their evening destination.
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| Photo: Helen Nash/IFAW |
Amboseli’s elephants live as they have for
millions of years -- safer every day from the greed of ivory poachers and the threat of human
encroachment. That I, as part of IFAW, may be playing a role in helping them
live as nature intended should perhaps be humbling and a source of pride, but
instead all I feel is grateful -- for it is the elephant’s gift to remind us to live
simply and in harmony with our surroundings; to choose our destination and then
enjoy our journey; to make each step thoughtfully; to stick together and take
care of each other.
The last pink streaks of sunlit clouds give way to a sky
swollen with stars. Night birds whistle an elaborate soundtrack against the
occasional grunts of a passing pride of lions and the panicked rumble of waterbuck
hooves.
The elephants lie down again in the tall, soft grass of their oasis and welcome the soft embrace of sleep.
All is as it should be.
