Slowly, stealthily, the pride of lions moved towards our car. They moved with purpose and method; one or two lions would stand, raise their heads, and then walk forward several paces. Once they stopped, they would sit on their hind legs or lie down, before another two lions would repeat the movement. They stared at us, observing, pondering, calculating. Then, they wove through our two trucks on the road, some lions going in front of us, some behind. We held our breath. There was nothing separating us from these powerful, graceful killers except the walls of the vehicle and a bit of height from the ground.
They ignored us. The guide explained that because we are all part of one car, we are viewed as a giant, single unit: a metallic, tasteless, unappetizing thing that the predators thought of as rather useless and unimportant. However, any large movements such as standing up or getting off the truck would break the camouflaging spell and single us out as individuals. I was nervous that one of the strangers in our vehicle would lose their cool and stand up or jump off to take pictures. It would only take one such incident for the lions to realize that the metallic, tasteless monsters actually carried a bountiful feast of defenseless, delicious humans!
This weekend, at the Madikwe Game Reserve, I was humbled by my immersion in nature. I realized how powerful and beautifully adapted all the creatures were to the environment and their different living situations in the food chains. While the other tourists and I were wrapped in layers upon layers of clothing and gloves and scarves and blankets, and still trembling from the cold of the sunless savannah nights, the lions, zebras, elephants, and giraffes needed nothing but their own bodily processes, carefully refined by centuries of adaptation and natural selection.
To fully appreciate the animals, they have to be observed in their natural habitat. In a zoo, where they are removed from the natural world and forced to live in a human-contrived, superficial imitation, the animals are nothing but moving pictures, no different from the animals on a movie screen. However, seeing herds of impala and zebras at sunrise, and a baby elephant with its mother in the savannah, and getting a rush of adrenaline from being in such close proximity to the lions — I felt a true appreciation for life on earth.
