We are in Africa so my mother can see elephants. She has a special reason for loving elephants. One saved her life when she was caught in the Great Hartford Circus Fire of 1944.

She and four other girls were there for a birthday party. When the fire erupted, amidst the flames and smoke and chaos, Mom saw an elephant heroically holding up a burning staircase. She and her friend ran down and escaped. The other girls, who were seated separately, did not make it out. Total deaths from the fire are estimated to be as high as 700.

Mom has only told this story to me a couple of times. I was shocked to stumble upon an independent account when I read Modoc, The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived by Ralph Heffer.

At any rate, we’ve come to Huluwe so Mom can see elephants in the wild, in their natural state, unconfined. She is 84. We are here, six women from the family, our own kind of herd. We are on a pilgrimage.

With some hesitation, I privately told our guide, Rian, the background story behind our trip. He proceeded to look for elephants for us. Yesterday, just after sunrise, he spotted three massive grayish lumps on the hillside opposite. Even with binoculars, I couldn’t detect they were living creatures; they continued to look like boulders. Rian however knew exactly what they were, what they were doing, and where they would go next.

He maneuvered the Land Cruiser through the brush for about twenty minutes, stopping in a stand of acacia trees. In a few minutes, three elephants lumbered in front of us. They were three ladies, Rian told us, two sisters and one three-year old calf. They paid no attention to us, but proceeded to demolish an entire acacia tree, placidly reaching up with their coiling trunks, delicately stripping off leaves, yanking down branches, and finally uprooting the whole tree, and stuffing its roots in their mouths. We watched in silence as these massive creatures went about their business, oblivious to us, though we were only ten feet away.

My attention was torn between the elephants and my mother, who was seated next to Rian. She looked like a child again, awe-struck.

A half hour later as the elephants lumbered off into the bush, I heard Mom tell Rian, “I was in a circus fire once…”