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Meditating on the one-breath elephant

30 October 2019 by Simon Barnes 5 Comments

Sacred Combe Safari IV

Day 8

Here are two subjects to avoid when you are in conversation with me. The first is human exceptionalism, and the second is haiku. That’s if you have any ambition of making this a dialogue. Once either subject comes up, I am likely to go spiralling off into a monologue: perhaps finding some great new overarcing theory to confound the entire world. Or not, of course.

Both these subjects tend to dominate my thoughts when I’m out in the Luangwa Valley. I mostly keep them for the long free period that lies between lunch and tea, when the heat of the day enforces stillness on humans and elephants and everything else apart from the busy long-tallied glossy starlings outside my hut and the puku antelopes who find a survival advantage in using this inhospitable time to take the day’s drink.

And so I sit and gaze and empathise. And sometimes I think about all the things that are supposed to divide humans from everything else that ever evolved on this planet, and none of which actually stands up as a an hard and impermeable barrier: emotion, thought, problem-solving, tool-use, language, culture, understanding of death, awareness of self, consciousness, language, syntax, sport, mercy, magnanimity, individuality, personality, reasoning, planning, foresight, imagination, insight, moral choice, and on and on. As mentioned in a recent blog, Jane Goodall reports strange behaviour in chimpanzees that represents something of a religious awe. And how about sense of humour? A signing gorilla called Koko tied his handler’s shoelaces together and then wittily signed Chase. 

I picked up one of the haiku collections I had brought with me, and once again helped myself to the great masters – and mistresses — of the one-breath poems. As I did so I watched an elephant cross the Mwaleshi River just downstream of the camp, barely getting his ankles wet. He walked along the far bank until he was opposite my hut, and there he took to the shade, and meditatively — it was that kind of afternoon – browsed from a generous-boughed tree.

Mwaleshi elephant

the river that divides us

is very shallow

http://www.wildlifeworldwide.com/group-tours/sacred-combe-safari

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Comments

  1. Claudia Westerbarkey says

    30 October 2019 at 5:49 pm

    Thank you for your blog and the wonderful haikus (is there a plural to haiku in English? Sorry, I’m not a native speaker). It makes me feel close to the bush I love so much while I’m sitting on my terrace from where I can just about get a glilmpse of the African coast. Unfortunately, it’s the most northern end of Africa . I can’t wait to be back in the bush on a horse to experience these wonderful rare moments that are sometimes very difficult to describe with words, at least for me 😉

    Reply
    • Simon Barnes says

      30 October 2019 at 5:53 pm

      Thank you for your kind words. Nothing like the bush, but longing for the bush is the next best thing I suppose. Hope you get back there soon.

      Reply
  2. Diane says

    31 October 2019 at 6:28 pm

    Fantastic…left me breathless many thanks,Simon

    Reply
  3. Penny Woollams says

    1 November 2019 at 2:05 pm

    An exquisitely beautiful thought Simon. Thank you.

    Reply
  4. Anthony Bird says

    2 December 2019 at 3:39 pm

    Very puzzling at first as I do not know what human exceptionallism is, I do not think my spelling is much good either but the mind’s eye picture of the lone elephant made my afternoon as I am catching up with missed mails. Plus, of course a nice bit of haiku, keep it up, Simon.

    Reply

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