Awe-struck In South Africa: A Blog By Lesli Woodruff
Na 10 dagen in de Kariega Game Reserve in Zuid-Afrika, deelt vrijwilliger Lesli Woodruff haar ervaringen in een geschreven blog. In samenwerking met de Kariega Foundation en Bring The Elephant Home (BTEH) hielpen de vrijwilligers als assistenten bij het observeren van wilde olifanten. Zo droegen ze direct bij aan natuurbescherming, terwijl ze deze indrukwekkende dieren van dichtbij ervaarden. Hier is haar verhaal te lezen (in het Engels).
From Technical Tumbleweeds to Gentle Giants
I’ve just finished 10 days doing an elephant identification and behavioral research program with Bring The Elephant Home. Before I arrived, I had been flat-out at work, months of 9, 10, 11-hour days, trying to make sense of technical tumbleweeds and how to unfurl them for non-technical, regular humans to comprehend. The news, not reassuring. The joy, sucked out of daily life for months. It’s hard to put one foot in front of the other each day without wondering whether all this is worth it.
Where Technology Meets Ecology
Our mission for the week was really to collect data on individual elephant identification, monitor their behavior, and collect feedback on an AI re-ID app we’re working on. Technology meets ecology, as it were. But on the first day, we were posed a question: describe moments while observing elephants where you felt present, connected, humbled, and in awe… The researchers were looking to wrap qualitative study around the steely quantitative data. The question continued: did this/these moments change anything in how you relate to elephants or the living world?
I’ve had the privilege of being in the presence of elephants many times, and each encounter leaves me fuller and gives me permission to leave a piece of my ego behind. I travel a lot, and each place that I feel a connection with leaves a bit of itself stuck in me, like shards of glass that meld with my old self.
The Magnitude of Connection
But it’s hard to put awe into words. I’m drawn to things that put me in my place as a human… the night sky, the open ocean, megafauna, the micro-second we inhabit in the universe’s grand scheme of things… As I sit watching elephants, whether it’s one or fifty, I’m overcome by a feeling of connectedness.
Each rumble, each little trumpet, each snort and head shake, they are communicating to each other, but also to those of us on the periphery (human and otherwise). The lion saw us well before we even knew he was there. The elephants feel us coming before we know where to look.
Permission to Exhale
We humans are disconnected from our natural instincts on a day-to-day basis. So being in the wild, amongst the wild things, brings me back to an equilibrium that I find impossible to connect with anywhere else.
Forest bathing has a valuable place in our modern world. Elephant bathing should be a thing because they touch each of our senses by just allowing us to be near them. The way they quietly but powerfully enter and exit an encounter; the way they recklessly play like they live for each moment and none other; the way the strongest and largest can be softest and sweetest… it’s awe but so much more. It’s permission to exhale in a way that’s so hard to do in the “real world”. And it leaves me wondering: which is the real world? Awe, connection, deference, all of it. And more please, if it gives me the kind of reset my fernweh soul craves.
Read more of the travel stories from this trip on my travel blog, and learn about Bring the Elephant Home to get involved. Many thanks to Brooke and Antoinette from BTEH for creating this program and for reminding us that science really needs a bit of awe.
Bedankt, Lesli!
Een grote dank aan Lesli Woodruff voor het schrijven en delen van haar bijzondere ervaringen in het Kariega Game Reserve. Dankzij haar persoonlijke verslag krijgen we een unieke inkijk in de samenwerking tussen de Kariega Foundation en Bring The Elephant Home.
Wil je meer lezen over Lesli haar avonturen of haar eerdere expedities met BTEH ontdekken? Bezoek dan haar website hier.
‹ Terug naar vorige pagina