Fast forward three weeks later: I lay wide awake in the wee hours of the night, this time in my cool, comfortable North American bedroom. As I tossed and turned in my familiar home hemisphere, I found myself remembering another such sleepless night - this time I was in a thatch-roofed room in the NorthWest Province of South Africa, my mind over-stimulated by the pure joy of once again being on a safari adventure. My mind had been a whirlwind and I had been struggling to grasp the fact that I was indeed leading this privileged lifestyle.
Let's be honest, not many people get to safari to far flung places on the globe, and perhaps even fewer get to repeat the adventure over and over again. This being my fourth safari, I was still in awe. I never take these trips for granted, and as I lay there, desperate for sleep, I was ever mindful of my blessings. In the midst of these grateful reveries, I heard him.
It was a gentle growl, a soft chuffing, not unlike a purr, but oh so different. Hard to adequately describe. I had become aware of a rooster crowing, at first, in the dark of the night. Crowing over and over again, as if in alarm. (As I write this, I realize it was most likely a much more exotic bird, but at the time, "rooster" came to my mind.) As the sound of the bird faded, and in the stark silence that followed, the long hoped-for rumble came, a slow, rolling sound that filled the space vacated by the bird, and as if by magic, an immense feeling of peace and comfort came over me, the too still air cooled and the seductive dark dreaminess of sleep finally overtook me.
I was in Africa, and I was again with the lions. And while we were separated by the walls of my rooms, and (no doubt) many sturdy fences, in the loneliness of the night we were one.
