I had wanted to meet Lawrence Anthony when I learned of him and the wild animal preserve he had founded at Thula Thula in South Africa. Later, he had gotten the understanding or the message, the gut knowing, the insight, the urge, the great idea, the light bulb going off, that as the Americans were invading Iraq, the animals in Saddam Hussein’s zoo needed care or they would die terrible deaths, the best of which would be being eaten. Immediately, he boarded an airplane and made his way to Babylon, that is Baghdad, shrewdly engaged American military support, protection, trucks and food that allowed him to save many of the animals that Hussein had collected in the Baghdad zoo. I wanted to talk with him when I read in his book, The Last Rhinos: My Battle to Save One of the World’s Greatest Creatures of his being “drafted” by Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army who controlled a preserve which had just become a war zone. Kony invited him—if a demand from a warlord made directly by one of his associates can be considered an invitation—to broker peace under UN auspices between Kony’s forces and the Ugandan government in return for Kony protecting the last Rhinos who resided there, already critically endangered by poachers. Anthony traveled, as required, unaccompanied and unarmed to Kony’s secret camp and forthwith did broker the deal which, however, did not last long because the Ugandan government would not be receiving funds from the US unless it was at war. And it needed the money.

But what had truly drawn me to Anthony was that he had spent all night, each night, for several months directly outside the boma enclosing the Elephants he had rescued so that they would begin to trust him, would perceive with their extreme sensitivity who he was, and over time accept that he had brought them to his land in order to save their lives. He under- stood when they first broke out of the makeshift enclosure he had erected, they were suffering the trauma of being removed from their own sacred land after a rancher threatened to shoot them because they were, in the local farmers’ words, vandalizing their crops, notwithstanding that they were just seeking food for themselves and their little ones where they had foraged for hundreds of years. And so they were transferred by truck to a strange place and confined until they accommodated, (capitulated), and until a large enough enclosure was secured. Anthony and the Elephants bonded finally and found true ways to communicate across the species barrier, Lawrence Anthony and his ranger reaching out, hour after hour, to Nana, the Elephant Matriarch, and later to Frankie who, when the two small herds merged, became Nana’s lineage holder, dharma heir.

When he died very suddenly, in Johannesburg, hours before he received a major award, the Elephants came to his house to acknowledge that they knew and to mourn him in their ceremonial way, an act they also understood would reveal their true nature to the world through him. And so, even though he died before I could meet him, I had to go and be on his land and in his presence and with the Elephants whom he had befriended. But I would not have gone without an invitation—I would not. And it was not, as you must understand, an invitation from Anthony or his people.

I asked the ranger at Thula Thula if he could take me to a place where it was likely that I would meet the Matriarch as she made her daily rounds. He hesitated, wary of imposing upon her in any way. “We will go where we go,” he said, “and she will be there or not.” We began to argue, although I was impressed by his adamant concern for the Elephants above the desires of a visitor.

Still, I said, “But you don’t understand. I’m only here in answer to her invitation.” He was very dubious though trying to disguise the level of in- credulity he felt, and, naturally, I didn’t have a letter or any proof. She had written on the wind or drummed their invitation on the earth in the ways her people are able to sound the alarm when culls occur and are perceived and understood precisely, even 100 miles distant. Even farther. Elephants’ ability to communicate is not limited by science’s ability to trace and verify the message.

“Why did she invite you?” the ranger asked as if sincerely entering the conversation.

“I believe a distant relative of hers suggested it. We’ve been meeting regularly in his territory over almost twenty years. He was the one who called me first and I came. Well, I am not sure he called me. It is equally possible, that he and his people, put out a universal call, and I am one of those who responded. Who knows who else received and who answered which call from which Elephants and where they met, if they did, and how? But I am the one who has lived this particular story for twenty years.

“I had been traveling with a group of people and we ended up at a certain tree at the side of the road across from a shallow pond pooling out from the river, and this became our ongoing meeting place every time we returned. A bird had landed on the tree while we were looking to meet whomever would appear. As it happened, the bird, a Fisher Eagle, Chapungu, was sacred to my friend who was driving and he refused to leave as long as the bird was there. Ultimately, the Elephant we now call the Ambassador, showed up. We had exchanges. I had brought my people and he had brought his.”

“How did you know it was him?”

“You couldn’t mistake the circumstances then, nor since, even though they vary from year to year. The fact of the meetings is incontrovertible; they play out like improvisational theater pieces that progress to tell a story from each of our interactions and we are all parties to it. I wasn’t alone as an observer or participant. There were witnesses. Professional, unbiased and skeptical. They each played a role.”

“And so he told you where to go next?” The Ranger was testy.

“Oh no. Eighteen years later, she sent us the call. Of this I am also almost certain, because this time, I received very particular instructions regarding etiquette, which I had never received before. Nor could I have as I didn’t know the first time whom I was going to meet, only that an over- whelming longing for such a meeting was instilled in me which I could not resist no matter the effort and cost. I had told my traveling companions, ‘I want to sit in council with the Elephant people.’ And so we went where we might meet them and then he came.”

“Is that why you went originally?” The Ranger was going over the territory again as if I hadn’t spoken of this, trying to find the loopholes, the fantasy that he could then dismiss. Patience was required to navigate this exchange.

“Yes.” 

“And he was waiting there?” 

“No, he wasn’t waiting. We waited for him. You see, given the way we humans are behaving in relation to animals and the Earth, we had to make significant gestures to show we were trustworthy. It wasn’t enough to come from the West Coast of the US, we had to be willing to wait. And so we did. We came looking for the opportunity to have an exchange. He came at almost the last hour of the last day. He was testing us. Of course, he was.”

The Ranger’s discomfort was increasing; the story is so unlikely. He must have been thinking, this woman is mad. But if it were a true story, he was obligated to bring us to her, and also if he brought us, the gesture implied his endorsement. Despite his overwhelming skepticism, he would have to accept the consequences. To do so, he had to be willing to trust us, or at least give us the benefit of the doubt and also to admit and follow his great hope that what I was relating was possible. If real, this situation had incredible implications for inter-species communication particularly because it was occurring at Thula Thula where Anthony had pioneered such a connection. 

Assessing a situation, deciding whether to trust someone or not, predicting behavior, negotiating tense circumstances were skills the Ranger honed because he guided people in the wild, but he usually didn’t have to apply them to what his passengers in his vehicle said about Elephants they didn’t know; constraining their behavior was task enough.

I continued telling the story in as casual and sober way I could.

“Oh no, he certainly wasn’t waiting for us.” I laughed, accepting being cross-examined. “We had to go out each day for several days and look for him. We had to find the place where he might be.”

“It could have been anywhere?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t have any way to recognize him, so he could have been anyone?”

“Yes.”

“But it sounds like you met him. Did he just turn up?”

“We were running out of time. It was the last day and almost the last hour we could be in his area. We were leaving the next day. And we still didn’t know where to go. Our hunt felt increasingly futile, and even foolish. We had come such a long distance.

“Then, as I told you, my colleague, who was driving, saw something, saw the bird, the Fisher Eagle, his totem which indicated that we must stop where we were. Whether or not it was the place, he wouldn’t go on. He turned off the engine. In his mind, we had been brought to this place for reasons we couldn’t anticipate. We had to wait and be open to whatever came to us. He was no longer looking for Elephants. He was in the sacred place of the Chapungu bird and he was exulting in its presence.

“Sometime after we had parked under the tree, I saw an Elephant far down the road along the river and prayed it was him. In my innocence, I prayed that I could call him to us telepathically, without recognizing that it was he who had called us a far greater distance from the US to Africa.

“He walked so slowly to us; it must have taken a thousand days. This was one of my first experiences that time does not exist in the way we presume it does. It took so long a time because we were being prepared to see who was before us. And then a similarly infinite time passed while he allowed me to gaze into his eyes and penetrated mine so that we could step over the line, which has separated us for thousands of years. We entered into a profound and inexplicable silent exchange.”

“What did he say?”

“To translate into English would diminish what occurred between us. We speak entirely different languages, each arising from different histories, world views, circumstances and experiences. His lineage, ancient compared to ours, was developed painstakingly over millions of years. Accordingly, his communications would be far more difficult for us to comprehend. In his presence, I quickly knew that he did not need language in order to communicate and that my words, being limited by my culture, would diminish our connection.”

“He wasn’t limited?”

“Not by his languages. He didn’t use language.”

“He came very, very close to me. I felt no harm would come. History was written on his face, the distances he had traveled, the dangers and their tentative resolutions. He let me see this and was cognizant of what I was able to perceive. We looked into each other’s eyes, each of us entirely open to the other. Clearly, he was leading; I was trying to follow. Time stopped and passed simultaneously. Left to time as I know it, what would have literally taken eons occurred within our comparatively few minutes together. Our half an hour equaled infinity. I was grateful that in such a short period of time, we were able to grasp that he is a peer. More than a peer. I felt the enormity of his presence, intellect and agency. He was orchestrating our meeting. I was grateful that I could respond. I believe the purpose was for me as a two-legged to fully understand and accept our common denominator as distinct and equal beings. I fully accepted, though he would not insist upon it—he is too great a being to do so—that he had rank and I did not in this interaction. Perhaps we are not peers. More likely, we are, as the Kogi say, merely the young ones and he and his people are the Elders, the Elder Brothers.

“I don’t know how to convey what happens within one when we are open to a great Presence. It was Epiphany, January 6, 1999. Later, remembering this brought awe, disbelief and then a little humor to relieve us of the enormity of the event. But before that, when I was beginning to glimpse what was occurring, I did speak to him in my mind believing he would understand my language, that he had that capacity.

“I said, ‘We both come from a Holocausted people and so, I promise you, your people are my people.’”

“So do you think he understood?” the Ranger asked.

“Well, over the years, he came again and again and again. He came every time we returned to that place. He understands more than I understand. I only know he called us. What sphere of intelligence does this reveal? I can’t assess it. I don’t understand it.  

“After about a half hour, I glanced as my watch. It was exactly time to leave the park before it closed. He must have known this as he leaped up in the same moment, spun around and disappeared into the bush. Although forbidden to be outside a vehicle, we all jumped out of the pickup and col- lapsed on the ground. Several of us were weeping. But we were late and we had to recover quickly, mount up. We set out regretfully and slowly. 

“And then … and then … and then … his people started coming down from above the hill and from among the trees behind us, little ones and matriarchs, great bulls, small groups, a small migration. They arranged themselves quietly and with great dignity facing us alongside a mile of the river road. Not one of us had ever seen such a lineup before or since, nor any photos of such. We did not know if the flood of animals had finished but we knew that one must never come between a female and her young, and yet we could not find another way to go except along the river way they were occupying. And so we set out trusting that our perception was correct: they were waiting for us now. As we proceeded, there was no danger although there could have been. There was only our slow and careful procession and their subtle but undeniable acknowledgement that we had come a great distance and, perhaps, most importantly, that we had heard and felt the call—the longing they had instilled in us. That we saw who they are. That some humans have the capacity to recognize the presence of the gods when they appear. Our understanding of the nature of the world was shattered by this beauty and now we live in Mystery and awe. Whatever occurred it came from beyond and was beyond us and remains so.” 

The Ranger fiddled with his intercom as I probed the brush with my camera. He needed time. Then I began speaking again. 

“That first meeting was almost twenty years ago. We have met since. And now we are here. We heard a call again. This time we could discern who sent it. It brought us here. As we were preparing to come, we learned there is a protocol to be followed. We hadn’t known this but could have anticipated it if we were wiser. We received instructions, and this is what I am trying to explain. 

“We have been instructed upon arrival to go with you to a neutral place that you know and wait for the Matriarch to appear. When she does, I am to introduce myself and my people, briefly describing our history and intent. You know how this is done with a minimum of words, if any. We will open ourselves fully and she will read who we are. Then, I am to ask permission to be here and to be among them. We, my people, Cynthia Travis and I, are to pledge our willingness and commitment to honor her and her people’s sovereignty, to take nothing from her or her people and to commit to protect them—from such as we are—as best we can. Nothing less will gain us entrance to their domain. 

“I understand,” I continued to the Ranger, “from your hesitancy and caution, that you are trustworthy in relationship to her which is what matters most. She knows that you will be the one to bring us and has probably arranged it. Still, it is up to you, though she will as we travel find us on her own if that is her intention. Each one of us has to meet issues of trust. These are such times.” He turned away from us and looked out at the road. We sat still, waiting. Then he started the truck again and we continued touring the area without any signs of Elephants that day. 

We went out early the next morning and the Ranger parked in a field that they often traverse in such a way that we would not be blocking their familiar path. They could, if they came by, greet us or not as they wished. Drought was taking its toll and they might go anywhere to search for water. This spot was on a little plain above the valley even though they were more likely to find hidden springs with remains of mud, if not running water, below. The sun rose high and it was very hot. We had to wait a long time, and we expected as much. Then they came slowly through the bush. 

Nana walked regally as she does, and we were aware that she saw us and was taking our measure. She did not stop but walked around the Rover so that she could examine us from every angle. It had a canvas roof, but no windows and we were completely exposed. Her people were following her. She may be slightly apart, but she is never away from them. And then, equally slowly, we saw her deputy, Frankie, the Matriarch-in-training, approaching. Frankie stopped and waited searchingly. Nana was behind me and as this was her choice, I did not turn around, but proceeded as I had been instructed to introduce myself and the others. I told her that we had received their call and were honoring it. If she and her people were willing, we would like to be among them for several days so that we could learn whatever it is they wish us to know, that we would honor the transmissions received and consider deeply what we were called to do. I told her we were not anthropologists or the equivalent for the animal world. 

Frankie nodded in her way and encircled us as Nana had done, clearly giving the little ones permission to explore us with their trunks, and then they left. Over the next days we met again and again. As has been the case each time, there is no way we could predict or anticipate what might occur, the way daily events ultimately conjoined to translate into direct communications. 

One day, Frankie and her extended family surrounded us as they had the first time. We had our eyes locked on each other. There was tension in the air and I could feel that the Ranger was wary though he didn’t say any- thing to us. He hesitated before he turned off the engine, kept his hand near the key and did not lean back in his seat as he had in the past. I was not afraid but concerned that I, we, might miss something in our ignorance of their ways. Then Frankie seemed to twitch with impatience and left my side to go to the other side of the vehicle where she caught my eye again as I turned to her. I knew this was a critical moment but not how to meet it. Then she spoke directly into my heart. There was no pretending her words weren’t clear. 

“Do you know,” she asked, her eyes piercing, “how hard it is to be the matriarch for my people when I can’t find water for them to drink and I am unable to leave this preserve to search for it? If, it exists anywhere at all. If your people haven’t consumed it all.” 

There was a complex back story behind her inquiry. She acknowledged that she and her people had been given sanctuary on this land and otherwise they would have been shot where they had been living because farms had been established where they had foraged and they tried to eat what they could, what was there, what belonged to them, but now they were facing the consequences of their imprisonment. She was not able to exercise her major responsibility to lead them to food and water wherever it might be. 

On our arrival, a group of guests had been greatly delayed for dinner. When they arrived, they said they had stopped to free a baby Nyala from a mud hole. But in only a few days, the mud had become dry and cracked. It had not rained for a long time. Our water was being trucked in from Richard’s Bay and the Native people on the hills surrounding the valley of Thula Thula were demonstrating, burning tires, blocking the roads because the water infrastructure promised them by the candidates in the last election had never materialized. 

“She sometimes gets testy,” our guide said, “it’s probably time for us to go.” 

“No,” I said, “she spoke to me,” hoping he would understand that I couldn’t leave until she did. When she, herself turned and led the younger Elephants to a grove of ripe fig trees, we stayed some distance watching them in happy camaraderie with each other, and left as well. When we were almost down the hill toward our encampment we saw that Frankie and Nana were leading the herd down the hill, but rather than keeping to the road as is their habit, they were walking parallel to us, slightly behind, with slow deliberation. 

“Do they ever come to the camp?” I asked. Our guide seemed distressed. “They are enacting their water witching skills,” he said, concerned. “They are walking along the buried water pipeline and in some hundred feet they will come to the only place the pipes go above ground to bring water to the lodge for the guests. Once, at a similar time of drought, they broke the pipes to get the water.” 

That afternoon, the Native villagers had commandeered the water truck headed for the Reserve. Frankly, we all cheered them as the action forced the government to deliver the water that was rightfully theirs. Now the Elephants stood very still facing the employees’ and the guests’ tents. Their behavior was not threatening, but it was exquisitely articulate. 

Frankie stood closest to my tent. It looked like a casual choice. No one else noticed how precisely she had positioned herself. She stayed there a long time and seemed to be pointing at the pipes with her trunk and then she slid her foot back and forth until she had shaped a foot width trench very close to the pipe. I was sitting on the porch looking at her, imagining her sliding her tusk under the pipe and raising it up, then raising her trunk higher until the water pipe broke and the water ran into the furrow which quickly became a stream. Had she planted the image in my mind? I wouldn’t have conceived it myself. Francoise Anthony, Lawrence’s widow, joined us for drinks that night. She drank a dry sherry and I had an Irish whiskey, neat. The contrast be- tween our indulgence, the Elephant’s anguish, and the Native people’s desperation was obvious. But the Elephants had invited us, had directed us to stay here, and were revealing their unhappy situation to us. Francoise’s deft avoidance of the subject of rain and water was, in itself, eloquent. But somehow, it had also been decided that Thula Thula would fill a few water holes for the Elephants. (And the Native people had won assurances that municipal water, enough for their needs would be delivered to them as needed.) Once this was guaranteed, we watched the Elephants leave in a slow and ponderous way, each step, usually so silent, a statement which we learned by the time dessert was served included advising us that they did not want to drink from metal tanks. That was made clear from the way they had stood by the water holes even as the tanks were being filled. Standing without moving was the language they seemed to have developed so there would be no confusion about their intent. They had been confined in a boma, they had yielded to human will, they had made peace with Lawrence Anthony. But he was in the clouds now and still there was no rain. They were wild, but they were not aggressive animals unless they had witnessed a cull, unless the young ones had seen the matriarchs slaughtered by AK47s fired from helicopters, unless the young bulls had no elders to guide them, unless they were fenced in, unless they were confined in a zoo or made to perform in a circus, unless they were tortured with bull hooks and electric prods. The combined two herds living at Thula Thula were pacific in nature, but, they wanted us to know, from the tension that characterized their stillness, that they could, if they remained without water, take us down. As we were finishing dinner, a guest who had retired early to take a shower came screaming into the dining area, in her robe with a towel wrapped around her red hair. When they could make out what she was saying, two guards ran off to her tent and ultimately we learned that when she turned away in her outdoor shower from the wall to the trees, she saw a Cobra with its head raised staring at her. She leaped toward the doorway and ran to us. Even a Koperkapel gets thirsty, the guards informed us when they returned from banishing it to an abandoned termite mound they thought it would like. Calmer and assured the Snake would not return, she described the water pouring down on the stone footing, the relief from the heat and dryness of the safari ride, and the terror she felt when she turned to see the cobra with its flared head looking at her or at the water, she couldn’t tell. She hadn’t turned the water off—the cobra must have drunk its fill. Fortunately the precious water hadn’t run too long or perhaps other animals had taken it in as had, most surely, the roots of the trees. Each night afterwards, we nodded to each other as we separated to sleep, indicating that we would pray for rain, not only for the people, who were suffering among other afflictions, our privilege, but, particularly for the Elephants and the animals. Whatever I knew about calling rain, I kept to myself. On the very last day, we set out to say goodbye to the Elephants on the way to the airport. The weather was awful. No, the weather was magnificent in that everyone’s prayers for rain had been answered in an ongoing downpour the day before The ponds, the pools, the mudflats, the streams, the roads were all flooding. The Ranger reluctantly agreed to try a precarious road but he would only go so far because we had gotten stuck in the mud the night before after the rain and we couldn’t risk it. On the other hand, these were our last hours and so he had to try though he doubted that we would find them. We and he had become comrades and were clear about the need to enact reciprocity with each other and all the beings we encountered. He accepted now that we had consistently been greeted by the Ambassador or other Elephants in other areas on the last hour of the last day. The road was muddy and almost impassable, filled with debris. We went slowly, the ranger always wanting to turn back and equally determined to have a final exchange. He was following an intuition, was taking this high and narrow road because now, he was compelled. When we had only minutes to stay until we had to set out for the airport, when we could go no further and reluctantly came to a stop, yielding to fate, we heard faint hums and rumbles, unmistakably the sounds of their communication with each other. Through the silvery mist beginning to shine with intermittent points of light, we saw their great gray shapes silhouetted against the mountain and were filled with gratitude as they turned toward us in acknowledgement. Yes, it was the last hour of the last day that we would be there, and we realized that their relative in the other country, the Ambassador, had told them that meeting, in whatever way, on the last hour of the last day would confirm the magic and great mystery we had entered together over time and space. They had needed reassurance that we would make the effort to find them, needed to know, as much as we did, that it was possible to dissolve into a field of common consciousness on behalf of a future in which we all coexist and thrive. We had come as far as we could, had hit a dead end of mud and a slight landslide which any being would recognize as impassable. They had seen us come to this point. They turned toward us. We greeted them in our hearts, offered tobacco which by now they knew was our sacrament, turned the Rover toward the highway and our departure to resume a life we could not escape despite the harm to our souls and to their lives. 

Even as I write this story, having told it so many times, I am shaken by its reality. It shatters all my, our, assumptions about the world. Yes, this happened. This really happened. I, with others, experienced this connection with the Elephant people several times over twenty years. It stunned us every time. We do not pretend to understand. I am left with questions I ask again and again. What is the true nature of the world in which such things happen? And how, then, shall we live? 

Just three weeks after we were in Thula Thula, having just returned to the orphanage connected with Thula Thula, a refuge and rehabilitation center for Rhinos and other baby animals who have lost their families to poaching, had held the staff hostage, ripped out the security cameras and shot two 18-month old white Rhinos, Impy and Gugy. The caregivers were savagely beaten and one woman was raped. Both baby Rhinos had their horns brutally removed. One had died after being shot but the other had been defaced while still alive and had to be euthanized. 

The night of the poaching, Frankie came to me. I don’t know if it was a dream or a visitation and can’t distinguish the two. She stood in front of me as she had in Thula Thula, assessing me and challenging me to meet her. I was ready to enter the pain she was carrying, put up no barriers against her ongoing awareness of the possibility of annihilation even there in Thula Thula. 

I wasn’t back in Africa. Still, she was with me. I was aware of her long tusks resting on the bed the way she had rested them on the hood of the truck. It was for these, I needed to understand, that her people were being slaughtered and brutally so, as it had been for the horns that the little ones had been massacred. The gross absurdity punctured my heart as she could have easily done had she attacked. It was for these, but she wasn’t giving them up. Elephants in Namibia were being born without tusks, not just females, the males as well. But if she were without her tusks she would be severely limited in her ability to perform what was necessary as an Elephant and a Matriarch. It was with these that she accessed groundwater for the herd, warded off attackers, protected or rescued little ones. Her tusks were large and carried a huge price. 

Our encounter lasted all night, maybe several nights. Elephants can walk very slowly or run 25 mph even up to 40 mph if required and seem like they are walking. So this proceeding went very slowly. Proceeding? Was this a trial? Oh yes. 

She didn’t speak to me but rather it seemed that she opened her mind and drew me in at the speed that I could go so that I was increasingly exposed to her inner cognizance, the world she inhabited and could not escape. Reminding me, she was in prison and disempowered and it had not been her choice to trade her former life for safety, a relative term. It wasn’t that she said this, or that I heard it, but that I had to allow my own mind to disappear and be absorbed into an other’s. Then as the stillness in me deepened and my own thoughts and context dissolved, I was no longer in her mind either but she had passed me on to another and then another Elephant so that the field of their understanding was made plainer to me than I could have imagined. And when the transfer came to a rest, I was in the savannah, which I also knew from many visits over the years. Assessing that I could bear the pain of it, she entered me into the Elephant people’s constant awareness of imminent annihilation by human hands. 

Fear, matriarchal fear. I was immersed in it. I was in a lake overgrown with algae. There was not enough oxygen for the beings that live there. Al- most drowning in it, but not. Unable to escape from it. Keeping my trunk above water. A heavy burden. The fear that I might be taken, any time, by a round of bullets from an AK47 delivered from a helicopter, ongoing terror for the species’ extinction. How would they go on without me when I carried the topo map of our two hundred year migration route, the local water map, above and under the surface, survival knowledge developed over millennia (though only rudimentary in defending against the many ways humans attacked) and a deep tactile memory of how it had been once? Once. Before. 

There was nothing I could do to safeguard myself and protect myself from my own death though I was considering the danger to the herd if they lost me and what I could do to break out, what I could transmit to them before I died. I felt all of this even as I remembered how I had protected the herd before, what it felt like to be continuously wary, considering what I would do, could do, if danger came. And then it came, and then I plowed forward, my great gray weight plunging, despite how confined I had been, like a tornado bearing down, the others behind me. 

I was entirely in Elephant mind and then somehow also in two minds at once as the woman in me queried the Elephant, also in me, “When you carry the gift and curse of such sentience and intelligence and are helpless, do you pray, as humans do, for an unlikely miracle?” 

There was no answer but when I was fully restored to myself as human, I prayed for her, and particularly to the Tanzanian Elephant Goddess with the cowry shell skirt, who accompanies the other Elephants on the altar; and so the night or the nights passed. 

From this perch, I do wonder if Elephants pray. Prayers imply a division between the penitent and the divine. The Elephants know. Are in the field. Are of it. The Mystery of no distinction simultaneous with individual awareness. 

I could feel in the way that specific feeling is a specific intelligence that the Elephants know the ways trees know. The way Earth knows. I could also feel the level of fear that the invading human presence had introduced, unknown until then for fifty million years. They had not had enemies unless weakened, ill or were a baby alone which was unlikely. Each Elephant is considered so precious that when illness or accident takes their lives, profound mourning rituals are enacted. But now death is everywhere and nothing relieves the Matriarch’s newly primal fear of abandoning the herd to slaughter. She didn’t fear her own death. She feared that her death would be accompanied by so many others. 

On March 25, 2021, The African Forest Elephant was listed as Critically Endangered and the Savannah Elephant as Endangered. The species is endangered. The Matriarch knows her people may become extinct. 

I pray that the savannah Matriarch’s death will be a natural one at the end of a long life, with a Matriarch in training, like Frankie, alongside her preparing a rain of leaves and blossoms and calming the herd that is already walking around her, their orbit winding the old one into the vortex taking her to the other side. 

In mid-January 2021, Frankie, the Matriarch, died of liver disease. She had sought out an isolated place to die and was found on January 15. Nana partially resumed the matriarchy, but reluctantly. Frankie’s daughter may assume the role, but it is not certain. There has been no equivalent Matriarch in training. 

In Thula Thula, the Elephants have gathered at the foot of the hill where the orphanage is, listening to the howls of mourning, human and non-human alike. They stand still until after the police anti-poaching teams have left. They witnessed the humans putting the little one out of his misery knowing he had witnessed his mother’s similar death and did not leave her body though he was weakened by agonizing pain, lack of food, water and the plenty of grief. That is where he was found when he was taken to the sanctuary. 

From their distance, they will wait while a ditch is dug for the two little bodies, while the raped woman is bathed, wrapped in soft hand-woven cloth, tended to carefully by the remaining staff and neighbors; her brothers from one of the surrounding villages standing guard now, enraged. They will discover which of the gang members of Mpumalanga did this deed. In the past, the local judiciary has been very lenient with the Rhino poachers. This time, the brothers say, there will be no mercy. The poachers showed none, they will receive none. Within six months, 365 poachers will be arraigned. While these are the locals who are trying to feed their families since their Indigenous ways of life have been totally destroyed through colonization, the Imperial profiteers are not among those to be fined and sentenced. 

The Elephants begin their slow circle of grief below, winding typhoon-like with greater and greater force, gathering all sentient beings into the inescapable center. Without my awareness, they gather me in. Frankie appears where I am sleeping and awakens me in more ways than one. 

La Vieja knows this story. And so she stands at her perch searching in all the directions, seeking water as the fires spring up everywhere around her, feeding on the trees.