An Elephant at My Tent ‣ Diverse Daily

Not 20 minutes after my arrival at Kutali Camp on the Zambezi River in Zambia, a large bull elephant strode through camp, walked up to the lunch table, and sampled—then summarily rejected—the cucumber salad that was due to be my lunch.

Two mornings later, I woke to find him outside my tent at 4 am, walking right past the tent door (door? It was a screen with a zipper). Lying in bed, wearing neither a stitch of clothing nor the prosthetic leg that I’d need to make any kind of getaway, I felt a little more vulnerable than usual. More exhilarated too! The morning before, I woke to find adult leopard prints outside my tent. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I was beguiled from the beginning!

I’ve been guiding safaris in Africa for over 15 years now, and not until I started coming to Zambia has it felt this adventurous—this wild. These were not the only encounters. That same bull elephant was often seen in and around camp, a constant reminder that the place was untamed and belonged to someone else. At one point, I was putting my camera bag into the Land Cruiser when the same resident bull quietly appeared at the back of the vehicle, silently and with no warning. There he was, just calmly browsing away. One of my favourite images was made without even leaving camp.

Another vignette, this time at Musekese, a camp in Kafue National Park, one of the largest and oldest parks in Africa, and also one of the most empty of humans. During the six nights I spent there, I only saw one other vehicle. But I was there at the end of the rainy season, which can be challenging for encountering wildlife. The grasses were over 6 feet high in places, the roads were deeply rutted from elephants who walked them while they were still sticky black mud, and the wildlife had plenty of options for water. That changes as the dry season progresses, but during my visit, it was challenging. So when a young leopard jumped out of the grasses into the road in front of us, my heart jumped, too. We followed him not far to the base of a sausage tree, where he lay down and gave me yet another version of my hundreds of “leopard in the grass” photographs.

But then he looked up at the lowest branch, and I barely had time to think, “Will he?” before he leapt into the tree. That brought the scene closer to interesting, as he sat about eye level with me. But then he started playing with the sausage fruit in the tree. Think heavy white dangling cucumbers (hmmm, on second thought, don’t think too long about that). And he just played. Like a kitten, he batted at them, tried to catch one, then batted at them again. Over and over. And when he tired of that, he knocked one to the ground, followed it down and, with the heavy fruit in his mouth, walked off very pleased with himself. I named him “Sausage,” and so far the name seems to have stuck. What he did with that sausage fruit is anyone’s guess. Never in my wildest dreams did my imagination conjure a scene like that.

You hope against hope for sightings even half as extraordinary as this. Something different. Something no one else might ever have seen. Even better, something no one has photographed. I was the only one there, just me and my guide, and these pictures thrill me for how unique they are. Actually, they also thrill me because the quality is as good as it is. The light was still quite low, so I was shooting at high ISO and pretty low shutter speeds, so the whole drive back to the camp later that morning, I was as nervous as I was excited about seeing the images on a larger screen. Would they be sharp in all the right places?

One more. When I booked the trip, a bit of a last-minute lark, one of my hopes for the adventure was time to spend with painted wolves, but with the grasses as high as they were and painted wolves already incredibly elusive, I kept my expectations low. There are only about 6,600 of this species still on the planet, so the odds aren’t great that you’ll even see them. But we got lucky, and we spent about an hour with a pack of eight dogs, backlit as the sun crept down, and they relaxed and played together. At one point, already marvelling at my luck, my guide handed me a cold gin and tonic. Painted wolves at sunset, my camera in one hand, and a G&T in the other? I felt like the luckiest man in the world.

This was the first solo trip I’ve done truly alone for a long time. Just me and a guide. It was more challenging than most, too. But where there’s challenge, there’s growth. I learned more about tracking. I asked more questions about species I knew nothing about. I grew as much as a naturalist on this trip as I did as a photographer, and that will serve me well. I took some photographic risks that I’ve been excited to try, and learned from those, too. Like my last trip to Kenya, I treated this trip as a Hail Mary of sorts and gave myself permission not to make the same images I’ve made before. I gave myself permission to wait out scenes for longer than I felt I had the patience for. To really stretch. I played more than I sometimes do, and I could feel the joy flooding back.

After 15 years focusing on wildlife, I now feel like I’m really making progress; that there might just be hope for me. It was a good reminder that the path towards mastery is a long journey, but a thrilling one if you don’t tie your hopes too tightly to specific outcomes and give yourself the permission you need to be a perpetual student. And time. You need time. Not the little fragments we give ourselves between other moments in life, but real time that we carve out for ourselves to do the things we need to do, to focus, to get into flow.

Here are a couple more.

This feels like a bit of an aside, but it’s very much on point, so bear with me. My mother is declining in health and mental acuity. Her butter is sliding off her biscuit a little, if you know what I mean. We spent the last month cleaning out her old apartment and getting her into a home where she’ll have the care she needs. What I found as I cleaned things out was a lifetime of memories she’d stashed away. Some we kept, many we could do nothing with but discard. A wedding dress. The baby bunting she brought me home in as a newborn. I saw my mother’s life reduced to a couple of banker’s boxes of memories, and a trailer of garbage bags, some donated, most to be taken to the dump. A few pieces of furniture that went to new homes.

I love my mother. She is becoming more and more just a fragment of the person I knew her to be, and it’s heartbreaking. She’s not making new memories, and she’s slowly forgetting the ones she had. I’ve never been more aware of how brief a lifetime is—how quickly it all goes by. And never so sure that all we have is now and the experiences with which we fill the present. They don’t have to be in the bush, but make them big. Make them count. Make them experiences that take your breath away and fill your soul with wonder. Don’t wait to live every moment.