The Natural World
There is a photograph of me standing in the South African bush flanked by two rangers with old fashioned rifles. I am awkward and stiff but manage to smile for the camera. There are short thorny trees dotting the landscape behind me and dry yellow grass everywhere. The picture was taken right after we finished an hour-long walk through big cat territory, home not only to lions, leopards, and cheetahs but also various other large animals.
I planned the trip to South Africa from thousands of miles away, in a city where the wildest things were squirrels that would occasionally get aggressive. Why not throw in a walk through the wilderness, I thought, as I reserved places on a guided bush walk. I had hiked through jungles and camped in remote places before. I thought I knew what I was getting into. But no, my experiences in the wild were limited to parts of the world where large animals and predators were either extremely rare or had been hunted to extinction. At the time, I could not fully comprehend a place like north-eastern South Africa with its high density of wild animals.
In the first couple of days there, I saw elephants, white and black rhinos, lions, leopards, and that most prolific of killers, the hippopotami. I had seen these animals from the relative safety of an open-air Jeep. So, the morning of my walk through big cat territory, I was nervous. We were four in our group, accompanied by two rangers dressed in olive green uniform and carrying rifles. We started walking in the pale light just before sunrise. I cursed my naivety as we walked, willing the animals to stay away from our group. I barely heard the ranger as she described the vegetation around us until she pointed out that we were walking on a path created by a pacing rhino. Solitary male rhinos are territorial and regularly patrol the borders of their territory. I looked around with unease. Why were we literally putting ourselves on a rhino’s path? After walking about three-quarters of an hour blessedly free from any animal sightings, I was starting to feel better. The walk was almost over. Moreover, the rangers clearly knew what they were doing. One of them would walk a few meters ahead and track our route while the second walked right behind us. Before the final stretch of our walk to the safety of our vehicle, we stopped in a clearing next to a rocky outcrop to drink water and eat snacks.
What happened next will be seared into my memory forever. One moment we were snacking on peanuts and the next moment, six or seven elephants materialized into the clearing thirty feet in front of us. Before this moment, I would not have believed if someone told me that a herd of elephants walking on dry scrub could be this quiet. The rangers ordered us to stay still. The elephants would have walked on and left us alone if it were not for an oblivious baby elephant that ran towards a bit of water about twenty feet to our left. One elephant immediately went to retrieve the unruly calf back into the herd. The rest of them came closer to us, flaring their ears and trumpeting. The safety of the calf was paramount, and we were a threat. The rangers sprang into action, commanding us to scramble onto the rocky outcrop, which we all did. One of the rangers came with us and the other first screamed at the elephants and then cocked his rifle. It did not work. An elephant separated from the herd and charged at us but stopped ten feet away. By this time, the calf was corralled into safety behind the line of protective adults. The ranger then threw a piece of rock at the elephant that had just mock charged at us. Incredibly, this did it for the herd. They turned tail and sped away from us in a cloud of dust.
It took me a few seconds to become aware of the raucous screams of baboons in a nearby tree. They were whooping and screaming as if they enjoyed the show they just watched. I, on the other hand, wanted to instantly teleport to our vehicle. My legs felt like jelly. How was I supposed to walk the remaining kilometre or so? If I did not walk back though, I would continue to be in the bush and that was enough motivation for me to get going. As we walked, I constantly looked back at the receding elephants. The herd did not want to have anything to do with us, but I was too much of a noob to appreciate that. I started to recover as we neared the vehicle and even remembered to take a picture with the rangers before we drove back.
**
It has been three years since that memorable walk in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. I am fortunate to have been able to observe so much wildlife in the five days we spent there. Over multiple safari drives, I watched with awe and wonder creatures I had never seen before, several classified as endangered.
Going on a guided walk in Kruger is a different experience altogether. It is a lot more sensory since you are on your feet and there are no barriers between you and the environment. I could smell vegetation and dung as I walked. I also felt a heightened sense of danger throughout the walk, which I was told was (mostly) misplaced. The rangers, who guide visitors on walks every day, told us that animal charges hardly ever happen. I wouldn’t know. I have lived in cities all my life; I have never shared space with wildlife and wouldn’t even begin to know how to correctly assess the level of danger in the wild.
Once we were safe inside the vehicle, I realized that we were the ones that had brought danger to the animals. The rangers were trained to protect human life and would have shot the elephant if it charged at us again. I would have never forgiven myself if that had happened.
Wildlife preserves are the last remaining evidence of once thriving ecosystems. The next time I visit one though, I will stay inside the safari vehicle.