Having waxed lyrical on many occasions with regard to taking pleasure in the simple things in life, particularly the fact that life is just too short for palatable food, quaffable wine and bearable company, in my opinion it all needs to be extraordinary. Don't get me wrong, extraordinary doesn't mean expensive taste in wine, nor well connected company, and I've already said enough about my view on the secret delights of peasant foods in my previous post. No, sometimes it's the simplest of pleasures that provide the true treasures in life.
To help illustrate my point; tonight we were sitting in our open game vehicle with engine off watching a magnificent black rhino walk straight towards us. Rhino, and black rhino in particular, can be rather unpredictable beasts, with the bulk of a 2 ton truck and the aggression of, well.. a black rhino. As it got to within 20m or so, it suddenly stopped, turned to face a small rocky outcrop to the side in the bush nearby and proceeded to charge lifting his massive horn wildly, when all of a sudden a spectacular male leopard ran from his hiding place. Not that a leopard would have even dreamed of attempting to ambush a rhino, but the rhino just felt pissed off by his presence, and made it known, because he can. The analogy is this. Sometimes when one is focused on the large 'rhino' in life, anticipating its charge and skewering one's Landcruiser like a kebab, one forgets to look into the bush, behind the rocky outcrops of life, for the splendid leopard, and would otherwise be mesmerised and totally oblivious to the great yet small things one simply passes by unnoticed.
Later tonight Dyl and I got us a little lost yet again, during a long evening/night drive, though we finally made it back home. We decided not to have a fire tonight, but rather to heat up a pre-prepared meal in lieu of time and hang about on the deck.
On walking out onto the deck we were greeted by a herd of elephant right in-front of us, no more than 10m away walking slowly along our side of the bank of the Olifants River. Tiny calves, only weeks old were being shielded from the outside by mothering young cows, and the deep vibrations of the older matriarch's purring communication was clear as she spotted us and cautioned the herd. We watched in silence as 24 elephant casually past us by.
As they disappeared a loud splash occurred in the river in front of us. On shining our torches at what appeared to be overzealous hippo going night swimming to their own tune of REM, a massive bull elephant emerged from the water and stood facing the direction of where the herd had just disappeared. Obviously an amorous fellow in search of a bit of passion. But instead he turned and walked up to our deck, the top of his head about the same height. His large tusks clearly visible as we purposefully avoided shining in his eyes. Clearly inquisitive however he edged closer, grunting and purring and shaking his head in attempt to intimidate and warn us of his might. Eventually his tusks could have touched our feet, he was so close but we dared not move an inch. I decided that talking to him in my deepest, calm voice was appropriate now, and he appeared to listen, everybody on the deck absolutely rigid. Then he slowly sniffed the outside shower head, and reversed up against the tree that the shower head is attached to and proceeded to wipe his bum up and down the trunk like a pillar of Kleenex Babysoft. We didn't take that as a sign of any disrespect you understand, as he clearly had an itchy bum. Then he came forward again, rubbed his cheek on our railing, pulled a few leaves off a nearby thorn tree and proceeded to literally disappear into the darkness without a sound.
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| Front of the deck where the bull elephant came right up to the previous night, and his 'toilet paper' tree to the right |
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