Elemoments

August 11 2016

Under a magical milkberry. 

A very bright first quarter moon dims the pinks of sunset into a silvery monochrome that helps to make out shapes yet fails to be bright enough for definition. Under an ancient Milkberry, the moonshade is so deep that I have to imagine what is happening based images in my head from daylight and on the sounds of bone-crunching and heavy, powerful jaws, tearing through one of Africa's largest herbivores.

A big male lion has dragged his prize under the dense foliage and, after many hours of sleep and attempts to woo an accompanying lioness, he's hungry again, and feeding. They have been here for two days now.

The lioness has her own agenda and has had for the

couple of weeks that I have seen them together. She is asleep, not far away, content.

Playing him.

Sitting here under these circumstances, it is hard to believe that 13 years ago, on this date, a Monday, after not doing anything in particular that was out of the ordinary for most of the day, a phone call late that night set me on a course that made the impossible possible and allowed me the chance to even be here in the first place.

I was living in a little cottage in the coastal town of Hermanus, a town known for its botanical heritage as well as the visiting whales that calve in Walker Bay every winter, offering some of the best land-based whale watching spots in the world. 

I had resigned myself to the fact that I was not likely to ever see Mopane Grove again, nor the elephants whose land it is and the very essence of what drives me as a human. It was not an easy realisation, the bush was my life, my love, my passion.

The phone call was from my Nephrologist, it was regarding blood tests that I had had the previous week and he offered me both good and bad news. The bad was that, after thirteen years of a degenerative kidney disease, I was finally going through renal failure. In some respects, my worst nightmare, in others, possibly my wildest dreams come true.

For thirteen years I managed to do everything I ever wanted to do, in case things went sour; from running a camp in the Okavango Delta, skiing and ice-climbing in Austria, exploring the wildlife of California, to Overnight walking safaris and thousands of square kilometres of exploring in The Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, the time had finally come to face this life-changing and challenging moment.

The good news he had to offer was like a dream in itself. After more than a decade of expecting the day that it would happen, the circumstances were overwhelmingly simple and I was extremely lucky. He said that a kidney was available if I wanted it?

By mid-afternoon the next day, August 12, I was waking up in ICU in the hospital in Cape Town. Snow covered the Cape mountains and it was a very cold and wet winter. I remember my mouth was parched from the lengthy op and in a semi-conscious state I was fighting with a nurse because I wanted water and all I was getting was ice. 

Despite the tubes and monitors and wires, I was awake. 

Anew. 

August 12 2016

We were sitting in the dark, last night, with the big male eating in even darker shadow. I think the lioness had crept away to find the pride whilst he was eating and after what seemed like hours, a roar started up somewhere to the North. As his brother's calls grew in intensity, he stopped eating and came out into the moonlight to answer. With barely a breeze and cold winter conditions, sitting ten feet from a roaring lion in the darkness of the middle of one of Africa's biggest National Parks, there is an awe and an excitement that is hard to articulate. It is a sound that one can feel vibrating in every organ, in every muscle. The Landie rattled in places the rockiest of roads couldn't reproduce.

Not long after the other male arrived, the big-bellied male left the remains to an obviously hungry brother and began walking away to the North. We met up with him again a little while later on another road and I proceeded to the next ridge to sit an listen and wait.

Switching off the lights and engine, filled with the excitement of lion on Mansimvula, it was an enormous surprise to suddenly see the huge silhouette of an ele, half hidden by mopane, right next to us. Deeper in we could hear other bulls stripping leaves and snapping branches. It was a moment with some ele's on the eve of my anniversary and quite fitting that the same day is now International Day of the Elephant.

So, here I am, thirteen years down the line, my life a bit of a mess but for the privilege of living where I do and making a point, as often as I can, to spend time with elephants. Today in particular.

It's funny, this feeling I get.

It comes from a need to reconnect, to plug back in after running without ele power for too long even though I live where I do, surrounded by wild Africa.

It's amazing, sometimes, when I break out of a funk that has descended after being cocooned in Mopane Grove for too long and I need to head out in the Landie (on the rare occasions these days that we do venture out), with the specific intention of finding an ele and I manage to recharge in a single moment at the sight of a silhouetted dark form, just crossing my path, oblivious of my presence or existence yet sharing my space and time. For even just a single ele moment is a milestone in my existence, one that I take from moment to moment.

These are what I call Elemoments!

An unpredictable thing, really, never knowing when the next ele moment will be. It’s just a feeling I get. A need to fulfil.

Here are two of those moments from the last week or so.

Argyle rd. Looking East from Mansimvula

The wind suddenly dropped away from a blustery and cold few days that were covered in cloud. Even the solar system was complaining; the fridge draining the batteries with no chance to even charge the laptop. I had been couped up, reading, writing and generally escaping the intrusive noise of visitors to Mansimvula and was desperate to get out. So, dressed up in layers and longs and even socks inside my moccasins, I headed out for one of my much-needed ele moments.

I had stopped at the Mansimvula sign and was about to turn in to follow up on a herd of impala I had heard alarming, probably from an Ingwe that had been calling at three this morning that was still hanging around.

On the main road looking East, down into the Nhlaralumi River crossing, I saw an ele calf run across the road and, on my arrival, found the matriarch and the calf that had already crossed moving deeper into the bush. To my right was another  youngster that had yet to cross, he was just the typical teenager, hanging back to show his growing independence.

I watched him cross the road and pick at a few things until he stopped at a particularly beautiful and well pruned little Knobthorn, no doubt at least a few decades old and obviously cherished by giraffe and kudu alike. Only, they don't over extend their welcome as eles are wont to do and, with its stunted dense little canopy, it must have been home to more than just the social spider's web that was swinging like an erratic pendulum as he plucked at the dense crown. Then he looked at me and put his head into the crown and began to push, using his weight through his left arm to stand on the trunk and push it flat. 

So he flattened this beautiful tree and I realized that perhaps I need to stop admiring trees and putting my love for them out there because they are the ones that the ele's target. Like a small Rain Tree that met the same fate a couple of weeks ago.

He made a half-hearted attempt at digging up the roots, flipping the tree over to try to reach the other side, bending down on his wrists to lever a root up with a tusk, ultimately not doing much before walking away. One of the most wonderful moments throughout the demise of this pretty little tree was the ubiquitous presence of a pair of drongos. although only one of them appears to photo bomb the proceedings, there was a pair that was never too far away to miss that arthropod either dug up by the ele or scared into flight.

Speaking of tusks, his were quite impressive for such a youngster; he might carry a gene long thought lost that will eventually add him to the tuskers hall of fame. Since he's only a kid, 13 or 14 at most, he has a future ahead of him if the humans don't mess it up.

By this time the mother and calf were slowly melting into the mopane scrub and I turned around to see if there were any others that I had missed. That’s when I noticed a Tawny eagle sitting in a dead tree, backlit by the afterglow of a wintery sunset. Reversing a bit for a clearer view, I noticed its kill clutched in a talon, dangling precariously from the branch it sat on. The carcass was that of a fairly large bird, plucked bare and headless like a chicken ready to roast. I guessed it must have been a guinea fowl by the size of it. We weren't far from the Tawny's nest and judging by the full crop the eagle had, I guessed the prey was destined for the nest but, like a leopard cub's inexperience at grappling with the remains of a kill and then losing it, the eagle momentarily lost its footing, dropping the kill in the process and disappeared from view as they both fell out of sight.

And I hadn't expected anything when I left Mopane Grove. I just wanted an elemoment.

Another moment, alone in my universe happened a couple of days ago.

A Sunday evening in the cool air coming from snow-blown mountains way down in the South with the cloud of the cold front dissipating, condensing, opening up for a moonless sky that the night would bring.

There is a line of planets on the ecliptic, from Venus setting in the West just after the sun, Mercury a bit higher, Jupiter up even high and Saturn and Mars teasing the Scorpion straight up at the zenith. Perhaps it's quite fitting that the trio of Venus, Jupiter and Mercury are hanging around Leo with all the lion activity of late and Mercury, being quite an inconspicuous little planet, is most noticeable now because it is sitting next to Regulus. The little king and a bright magnitude star of the constellation of Leo.

But I digress.

As I so often do.

I have been doing some much-needed work on the Landie. I have given her new this and new that and even a few extra bits that are once in a Landie lifetime replacements and despite the chronic exhaust problem, the engine's purring. Kinks in the electronics are ironed out, timing is sorted, plugs are firing.

This Sunday evening, with clearing skies proved to be a perfect time for a test drive and a perfect time for another much-needed elemoment.

It was my second attempt at a test drive.

The first was cut short by the exhaust suddenly blowing again and I knew that my chances of finding anything would be diminished entirely by an exhaust that sounded like a tractor without a manifold.

My second attempt, after hasty repairs, about two hours later and closer to sunset, proved, once again, that timing is so important. Not only that of an engine but the universe in general.

I headed South, past the airstrip of Ntsiri but caught a glimpse of an ele bull crossing the road some distance way behind me. However, by the time I turned around and covered the distance, he was already walking deeper into the bush, perpendicular to the road.

He was a very impressive ele, might I add, missing a right tusk and with an immaculate left, but his incisors were his least impressive feature, he is simply a magnificent mature bull and he walked up to a large Marula tree, stretched his trunk up the trunk of the tree as high as he could reach, with his tusks, just wide enough to slide up on either side of the big tree's girth, pointing straight up as he rubbed his chin.

The backs of the ears were next and then a shoulder until it was time for a bum rub of note. Left cheek, right cheek, left again until he was satisfied. He eventually just strolled off into the rust coloured Mopaniveld, himself dusted with the iconic rich red soils that are as much a part of Africa as are the ele's themselves.

Watching him walk into his wilderness, disappearing from view, my day was made. I had taken out the Landie for a test drive and an ele of note was all I needed to put some of a confuddled life back into perspective.

I found myself bound to record my thoughts and stopped at the Mansimvula sign to type them up on the small screen of an iPhone. The ele I had seen was moving East and that meant parallel to our southern boundary, the main road, and I didn't expect he would suddenly turn North and visit Mopane Grove.

A deep red sun set beyond the ridge as I headed for home along the Sibon boundary, bringing me East of Mopane Grove as I arrived. Standing between myself and camp was another ele bull, a bit younger and strangely enough, missing the bulk of his left tusk with a break very similar to the older bull's right tusk.

He was digging for something, kicking up very little dust but moving mounds of rich damp soil that matched the colour of the changing and dying leaves of the Mopane trees as they shed for the new spring growth only weeks away.

As he ambled off, I parked the Landie and could hear him for a long time as I busied myself with the end of day chores.

I'm sure the two bulls were talking to each other, planning a rendezvous somewhere in the vast Mopane forests in the East.

It is now late afternoon, sunny and a blue sky from horizon to horizon. It is time. 

Ele-time.

See you later.