Being on safari is like visiting the zoo, in the same way that Adele’s concert is like me singing in the shower.  It is so many worlds apart as to be unrecognizable.  Being five feet away from a hunting leopard as she uses the purr of our idling Land Rover to mask her approach is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced if you grew up anywhere in the modern world.

Kruger National Park is a place that South Africa should never take for granted.  It is one of the great treasures of the world.  We were lucky enough to spend 4 nights and 5 days in Sabi Sands, one of the private game reserves attached to the national park.   Because it is private land, we were able to go off-path and get much closer to the animals.

Travel is about captured moments that will never be let go.

A curious yearling elephant calf walking  towards our Land Rover, only to have us warned away by the flapping of his mother’s ears – a signal our driver did not ignore.

A lion courting/stalking a female in heat, for the third day in a row, impatient but horny for the long haul, roaring and following her around every moment.  She ignored him until he got too close or tried to mount her, and then came growling and biting.  So he’d lay down.  And try again in 5 minutes.

A pride of lions and the carcass of a rhino.

Hyena pups biting at the mudflaps of our vehicles, not understanding why they weren’t edible (which they eventually would have been, given enough time.  Like me, they eat anything.)

A giraffe nibbling the tops of trees like an impossibly graceful and awkward alien creature.

A leopard hunting only a few feet away from our Rover.

Right after a break up, there is a moment of wondering if it all was a waste of time, because the relationship wasn’t forever.  I am embarrassed.  I’m a failure.  Am I wrong in my requirements,  my priorities…my self.

And then, I start to work through my lessons.  What did I learn about myself, about how I move through the world, about people, about how I love?

And one of the lessons of this relationship was that forever isn’t the only benchmark.  It isn’t all or nothing.  I tried and he tried.  I’m a different person because of him, and he is a different person because of me.  And that’s enough.  Forever isn’t the only kind of wonderful and worthy.

Michael wasn’t forever.  But he was a beautiful soul that I was connected to for almost four years.  And though it will be different, he and I will always be connected.

Sunset in the bush.

Next:  Compartments in my heart and endings.