"If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear.
What one fears, one destroys". Chief Dan George
I spent a couple of hours "communicating" with this vervet monkey near my tent in Mahale National Park in northwest Tanzania not too long ago. With my camera poised, I quietly (so I thought) moved through the jungle to gain a good vantage point from which to capture a good image. Every time I got set up and ready to click the shutter, he or she would move to another branch or tree. I soon got the feeling I was being "played for the fool". After about 45 minutes of this unproductive time (at least from my point of view), I resigned myself to the fact that cooperation was not the "forte" of the vervet monkey.
I decided that I would go and sit peacefully on the deck of my tent (yes these were 5 star tents:-)) and relax and call it a day. With my camera sitting beside me on the lounge, I began to read the book I had brought on the trip. After about 20 minutes of reading, I could hear rustling in the trees around my tent and on my roof. After another 20 minutes of activity, I looked up and saw this critter just staring at me as if to say "what, giving up already? I gently reached for my camera and got a few images. This little game that the monkey and I were engaged in reminded me of something that Henry David Thoreau said:
"Happiness is like a butterfly -- the more you chase it, the more it will
elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come
and sit softly on your shoulder."
Moving from Mahale to the eastern part of the country I encountered many animals in the Serengeti. This group of giraffe were particularly inquisitive.
*Note to readers: here is where I am quite frustrated #$@#$%$#@! The images of the giraffes is supposed to be here, not at the top. I thought I had this thing figured out, BUT I GUESS NOT!!!! This is now me going into Transcendental Meditation or some other catatonic-like state and regaining my sense of tranquility OHM! OHM! OHM! Now that I am almost at peace with the world, I think I will go have a snack instead of getting further frustrated.
Love and peace for now!
Dennis
I like the quotation about happiness from Henry David Thoreau. Happiness is a feeling of heart,a state of mind; therefore, We can just be,simply be happy. For example, relaxing in a deck chair ,hand in hand, looking up at the sky, day or night, and just observe what we see, feel the breeze, listen to all the sounds around us, smell the air...It's so great! We do not have to chase happiness that we can easily find in our lives!
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