A Stubborn and Luminous Mystery :

THE SPIRITUAL LIVES OF ANIMALS

In December 2023, I returned to the wild, to Chobe National Park in Botswana for the ninth time in twenty-five years, companioned on six of those journey by my dear friend, writer and founder of everyday gandhis, Cynthia Travis, because we are obligated to a mystery.  Indigenous peoples understand that while dreams land on a person, they are intended for the community, to teach, inform, warn, alert us so that we live in the right ways. The same is true for Story.  Sometimes we are called to live a Story, a cosmic action which alters and altars (sic) us individually but as it is an event or several occurrences, it draws the community into it as well through the imagination and we all learn to live accordingly.  

This mystery began on Epiphany, January 6^th 1999 and repeated again and again through December 2023.  Worlds intersected in incomprehensible ways through the actions of two species, the human and the more than human, the Elephant. Many of you know the beginning of this story and the events that followed, each time more enigmatic and baffling than the times before.  (To review the story through 2017, it can be accessed as a document and as a talk on YouTube.)¹

Cynthia and I arrived at Chobe National Park in the afternoon on early December 2023 and were greeted near the entrance by Elephants as we have been in the past; this was not unusual.  

We had returned to Chobe to engage with the Ambassador or whoever was designated for such an interaction in whatever way it would occur about which we had no control.  However, over the years, it turned out that such an incident would regularly occur at Chobe at the same place, at the the last hour of the last day we were in the area and so we played our part by returning to the Chapungu tree where a Fisher Eagle had landed on 1/6/99 to indicate where we were to wait for a meeting.  It was not a matter of seeing Elephants or being in their vicinity, which were in themselves precious events, but to be available to interact with or receive a specific communication from the Elephant or the herd.

Early on the second morning, we took a boat along the Chobe river where we enjoyed watching the Elephants bathe. 

We went to the tree the second afternoon and greeted the abundance of animals there but again nothing out of the ordinary in relationship to us in particular occurred.  Still being able to see the animals in the ways they live their lives was thrilling for us. 

Over the three weeks, Cynthia and I had similar responses to this trip to Africa. We became hyper aware of patterns and resonances, the exquisite ways that animals move together without saying a word.  We began puzzling the repetition in different forms of the equivalent of the murmuration of starlings, who in an instant form a moving cloud of beauty as they swirl in curves and spirals and then as startlingly become still again.  Every species, it seemed, carries the intelligence of precise alignment, from the hunting postures of the Lions, 

to the coordinated attack of wild dogs,

or the precise movements of a herd of zebra accented by the correlation of their stripes. 

We had been brought to Paradise. While the wild is commonly associated with brutality and chaos – undoubtedly our own projections  -- we saw deep calm, cooperation, and multiple expressions of friendship and affection. We had seen this before but it had never been so clear and ubiquitous.

It was the very beginning of the rainy season. Within hours of the first rains, the fields of golden and yellow grasses were interlaced with various shades of new green

and the sky declared the revitalization in its own language:

Yes, we were in Paradise but had come there from the savagery and shambles of contemporary life on this planet.  So aware and broken by the violence of urban squalor, industrialization and pollution that has become commonplace in our world, we were gratefully awed by the fluorescence of life,

as well as the arms of death,

and the intrinsic beauty of its commonplace occurrences.

Still the splendor and grace of our surroundings had their drawbacks. It was 105°, the highest temperatures recorded in Botswana in December.  The rapid decline of our climate was obvious even here where human incursion is limited. On the one hand, it was early summer in southern Africa, and we were able to witness the hidden passions of Leopards and the wildly dramatic urgency of Lions procreating

and there were little ones everywhere, Lion cubs and tiny day old Elephant calves following their herds under their mothers massive legs.  On the other hand, checking into the news after dinner, I was aware of the continuous unspeakable bombardment and destruction of Gaza and her people.  Paradise and Hell, day after day.  Paradise, the realm of the natural world and Hell, the territory of the human.    

On the third day, the last day we would be in Chobe, we waited at the Chapungu tree until we had to leave in accord with the Park’s regulation.  It was a rainy day.  We didn’t expect the Elephants to come for there was no reason for them to make the long trek to the river when it was cooler in the Mopane woodland where they slept and the dry pans had filled rapidly with enough water for them to drink and splash.  Still, on eight different occasions at Chobe and nineteen distinct occasions all in all, in the wild of four different countries, at six different preserves, individual Elephants or herds had initiated resonant narrative encounters on the last hour of the last day we would be in that territory.  We had come from California to Chobe as a sacred responsibility, a moral imperative to appear because we believed we had been summoned to testify to the reality of the repeated magic of communication across time, space, language and species.

Now for the first time, we hadn’t interacted.  Though I hoped we might still have such encounters as we had in the past in other places, I was disappointed and mystified. Was there another meaning to be gleaned from our lack of engagement?  Of course, I was so grateful for the utter beauty and surprise of what we had already seen.  And for Paradise.  It occurred to us that this was the purpose of this visit.  That we would see Paradise, the way it had been, so as to teach us what might still be possible and to reveal the patterns and laws that were basic to it. 

The next day, the guide from our Lodge surprised us by offering a short boat ride before breakfast and our ride to the helicopter. It was a cold, gray morning, still and quiet, with intermittent rain.  There were very few animals at the river, a crocodile, an Eagle, and for a long time we saw no Elephants at all and then a few came to the water but left quickly.  We went to the far bend where they often accumulate in massive herds and it was empty and we turned around toward the Lodge. 

Various news items the night before had preoccupied me with concerns about AI and how it could affect the natural world. My own research and studies had left me greatly alarmed and new fears were arising in me that morning.  I borrowed some paper to make some notes that felt urgent.  Was it strategic to keep challenging AI or would it be more effective to find ways of mitigation so that it didn’t do great harm, that is, as much harm as was probable without any intervention.  

At the instant I was thinking about ethics, I was startled to see a herd of Elephants speeding wildly down the hill we were approaching. They entered the river together in a single line parallel to the shore, bulls, matriarchs, males and females, old, young, babies, each aligned with the other, dipping their trunks and tusks into the water in synchronous notion. 

Five minutes from the Lodge, we stopped and watched disbelieving and entranced by the coordinated dance of the gray bodies bending and rising.  We were in the presence of the holy.  There was no other way to envisage their sudden dramatic appearance. Something was being communicated. But what? Then we had to go on.  There was no way we could linger.  The moment we knew we had to leave, the entire herd turned in one motion and aligned themselves with their backs to us.  Then they began to climb the hill again in a single line and when the elders reached the summit, they emitted three loud trumpet calls and disappeared.

There was no doubt that on the last moment, indeed, of the last day, which we had not calculated, the Elephants approached and confirmed that we were involved in a spiritual event as profound as any I have ever known.  We were in their hands, so to speak, and in the hands of spirit.

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Four questions repeated and repeated for the next weeks and stay with me now: 
How is this possible?
What does it imply?
What does it ask of us?
How are we to meet it?

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This was not the only clear effort at communication from the Elephants on this journey.  As in the past there were events at each of the other Lodges we had visited and they also conformed to the pattern of the last minute of the last day.

In 201l, Krystyna Jurzykowski, of Fossil Rim Wildlife Center and the High Hope retreat center, and I had been prevented from leaving Chobe when Elephants blocked the road after a violent incident by another driver that looked like it would end in injury for both species.  When they closed the road for us, we turned off the key and yielded to whatever they would demand. After a short time, they let us pass.  We had been tested and we had passed the test.

Remembering this image, I was startled when we were leaving the river the last full day we would be in Vumbura, Botswana and Elephants blocked the road in this way.

This undeniable reference to another event unites the many occasions into one since the years of contact beginning in 1999.  Though I had originally thought it was my idea to sit in council with Elephants, to make contact with them, it is more likely that the Elephants so greatly endangered by poaching, agriculture expansion and habitat limitations had sent signals calling out for assistance and I happened to be one of those who perceived the call and responded. Afterwards, perhaps they ‘had my number,’ and a relationship between us began.

Because of a historical memoir Cynthia Travis is writing, her focus was also on Lions.  Perceiving this may have been all that the Lions needed to allow us to come into their presence or to come into ours as they did. We came upon Lions and Elephants every time we went on a game drive but still we were astonished on leaving the Okavango Delta for the plane to Johannesburg to return to the States that a pack of Lions were blocking the road.  I had in my mind already said good-bye to the Elephants and so I was further astounded afterwards at what was clearly the very last moment of the very day on Safari to come upon an Elephant herd navigating a small stream and to have a young male engage in leave-taking.

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My dear friend and landmate, Cheryl Potts, (Alutiiq, Seneca) suggested that her relationship with Shoonaq’ the wolf she raised from a puppy who passed recently was based on an exchange of energy with which Shoonaq’ was more adept than Cheryl.  If Cheryl was traveling, whether for a few days or a month, Shoonaq’ would always anticipate the exact moment of her return. Her caretakers at Topanga Pet Resort observed over time that Shoonaq’ within twenty-four hours of Cheryl’s eventual return, expected or not, would become impatient and then they knew she would appear soon.  Cheryl concluded that she unwittingly sent out energy that Shoonaq’ could receive and that the two of them shared a field of non-verbal awareness to which Shoonaq’ was far more sensitive than Cheryl. 

Cheryl’s experience with Shoonaq was not unlike that with the herd of Elephants that regularly came to Lawrence Anthony’s house at Thula Thula, South Africa, to greet him on his return from travels, even if he had changed his plans at the last minute. (The Elephant Whisperer). Their presence had startled his sequestered wife, Francoise Malby Anthony, (An Elephant in My Kitchen) when they appeared to mourn him two days after he died. In 2017, we had experienced how articulate the matriarch, Frankie of this same herd, was about the drought and their need for water in 2017. (La Vieja: A Journal of Fire).

To understand that we can communicate in this way, that the animals and beings of the natural world are adept at broadcasting and receiving, is also to recognize the nature of the world to which we are oblivious when we only focus on our own abilities and not the extraordinary, often shimmering gifts of the others.  

The current human development of consciousness allows us to perceive communications from the more than human which have been regularly blocked by our fears, religions, egos and non-Indigenous assumptions of dominance and superiority.  I am awed by all these events, by these wildly imaginative connections and am also greatly humbled.  As a human, I could not arrange these events except to show up and be present.  The narrative constructions, the theatrical presentations, the meanings and implications are of their mastery, not ours. The frequency with which the animals, the more than humans are making themselves known to us reveals knowledge about the world the dominant culture has not been able to imagine although such has been available for thousands of years to Indigenous peoples.  These invisible and inaudible communications have always existed on the planet even as we are just developing the ability to attune to them.

These Elephants exercise will and agency. This was clear from the first meeting with the Ambassador and is now even more certain.  To know and experience this is to live in a world where animals and humans are equal participants in life events.  But there is something else: the Elephants must be responding to spiritual energies, to the inter-relationship of the natural world and the spirits, to the spirits entwined in the natural world and the natural world as spiritual territory. To yield to these circumstances, these events and to this knowledge is to be entangled once again in a story of wonder that asserts the wild beauty and the luminous ways of Creation. And in this way, hopefully with their help, we will learn how to save this magical Earth.

1.  Deena Metzger’s Opening Convocation at the International Free the Elephants Conference and Film Festival, April 27-29 2018, Portland Oregon.

Photos by Deena Metzger with the exception of the Elephants mourning Lawrence Anthony in public domain.

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