In this safari blog post, Primal Pathways guide, Brent Harris has his principles tested on safari and shares the experience. Save or let nature take its course?...
Patterns
Nature is full of patterns: slow patterns of dry, cracked clay soils beneath our feet, the tall lines of the mopane forest ahead of us, and the winding course of the dry riverbed that has been etched between them. The seasonal patterns of rainstorms, rivers that rise three meters in a matter of hours, vast pans of water that only yesterday were not there, and green leaves that appear in the blink of an eye...
Story and the Wilderness
We don’t always discover things in the order that they have happened. The wilderness is too vast and detailed to have an all-encompassing experience of the events of life out here. Chance encounters and evidence collect, in a random sequence, and link in our mind to form a story. It is not the mind that made the story but the story that made the mind. It’s called neuroplasticity, the formation of mental pathways and linkages: our thoughts and experiences literally build the physical matter of our own brain...
Interpreting the trail
Drama
The African wilderness can be many things. As I sit here it is a place of bird calls and harmony. One might even be forgiven for asking where all the animals are. Being in the wilderness is not all about dramatic sightings. It is not always possible to be in the right place at the right time, and if it were we would certainly miss the rest of the moods out here...
Thud
As I look out now, the herd of impala busies itself around a small waterhole. Tails flick in the hot sunshine and the territorial male licks the air, testing the scent of the anticipated offspring, a few weeks from due, in the belly of his pregnant females. I am watching them closely, trying to interpret their graceful and spritely demeanour. Looking for signs of nostalgia, I question whether they carry any memory of the startling scene that faced them in the early hours of morning...