Initiation through Darkness
Wild Life’s founder Peter Raimondo on his first night time wildlife encounter
All of Wild Life’s immersions take place in some of the last great wildernesses of Africa, with high densities of wildlife. To stay safe at night, we take turns keeping night watch. Here, Peter Raimondo, Wild Life’s founder, describes his first wildlife encounter during night watch. Peter was 13 years old at the time and was visiting the iMfolozi together with his older brother and father, lead by experienced wilderness facilitators.
Bruce chose to set up camp for the night in a tamboti grove. There was a walk to the river, out over the savannah, so fetching water was an event. Bruce showed me how to make a fire. How to choose a place, clear the earth, and build up a base to hold the heat and protect the root systems in the earth below. Selecting the right kindling, the right thickness of the twigs and the right wood, and, if you knew how fire is breathed, starting the fire in your hands, feeding it, turning it out of your hand onto the ground next to a heavier wood, and feeding it more resin-rich wood without suffocating the flame.
“My imagination could wander freely, dragging all my senses into the darkness.”
My turn for the night watch came just before midnight. The previous night, the fear I had felt in the darkness, sitting alone by the fire, blurred my sense of time, my mind and memory. But this night, I sat by the fire with the fledgling confidence of experience. Listening through my fear for that feeling of being okay. I found it in the flicker of fire light, the diffuse shadows cast on the trunks of the tamboti trees, sentinels surrounding us, framing the blackness beyond. Darkness made blacker by the smallest fire light. There was comfort too in the snores of the men, the dented and charred aluminium cooking pot with left-overs from dinner in it, the blackened kettle hot with boiled water, the stillness of the air, and strangely, there was comfort in the night itself. There was clarity. My imagination could wander freely, dragging all my senses into the darkness, through that still air, through the hanging silence, to map the landscape of possibility around me. A seed pod would drop from a tree and at first I would hear the footstep of a nyala, then suspended in awareness waiting for the next step. Another pod would fall, and it would become a seed pod falling into dry leaves. A rustle in the leaves would be a snake-listen-no, it is the settling of a nightjar. The elephant moving through the forest would become the creak of living wood as it cooled during the night. My imagination was schooled by fear and my senses. This was my first initiation through darkness into reality.
“I turn my back to the fire and step out of that circle of light, into darkness, to walk and scan with a flashlight the circumference of those sleeping next to the fire — searching with eyes, for other eyes; searching for movement or form.”
It had been some time since my watch had started, and long enough so that without a timepiece, I no longer had a familiar sense of time. I moved my seat of a rolled-up sleeping bag a few feet back from the fire so I could lean against the tree trunk. I had done perhaps six or seven rounds of the camp. Standing up, I turn my back to the fire and step out of that circle of light, into darkness, to walk and scan with a flashlight the circumference of those sleeping next to the fire — searching with eyes, for other eyes; searching for movement or form. I had stoked the fire and settled my back against the tree, and was absorbed in silence when I heard breathing. First, it was my own breath, then one of the sleeping men, then nothing at all, a breeze picking up, and then something else. It was heavy enough now to be real, to belong to a body. I could hear moist nostrils as warm air moved through them, then a heavy exhalation and the soft, dull thud of a heavy pad on hard, dry earth. My flashlight was on and up, scanning the darkness. Nothing. Fear kept me still. I did not want to move or breathe. I did not want any distraction to take away my attention from the sound somewhere out there beyond my light. My eyes darted to Bruce’s sleeping bag with the question of whether this was a good time to wake him. He was lying still on his side, a few meters from me, his head to the fire, and his eyes were open. He looked at me and said nothing. I wasn’t alone. Another soft thud and my eyes darted toward the sound. A horn pierced the peripheral light of the beam, and still more horn moved into the light. The horn widened, and behind it came those moist, dark nostrils, and behind those nostrils came the mammoth body of a rhino. She stopped for a moment, perhaps 12 meters from me, too close, raising her head slightly, her awareness extending to me, her eyes softly meeting mine. Her eyes took me in gently, lingered on me, and let me go. She dropped her head and followed her horn in her slow walk out of the light. I turned to Bruce, still with the question of waking him on my mind, and he was looking at me. He slowly closed his eyes, and I had the feeling that there was not much difference between his sleeping and his waking. I stayed awake for a few more rounds, trying not to be afraid, and then, earlier than I guessed was fair, woke my brother for his turn at the fire.
Written By Peter Raimondo
Originally published at https://www.wildmag.life on January 20, 2020.
