from the book.....
beyond words.....
big thx for the Tim Flannery review...........................
.pg 95
Lyall Watson..on observations along the S African sea coast..
''The sensation I was feeling on the clifftop was some sort of reverberation in the air itself. Perhaps an interference pattern set up between the whale call and its echo from the rocks below? That too seemed unlikely, and I was still puzzling over it when I realized that the whale had submerged and I was still feeling something. The strange rhythm seemed now to be coming from behind me, from the land, so I turned to look across the gorge, sweeping my gaze across the cliffs, over the great milkwood tree – and then swiftly back to the tree again, where my heart stopped.
I was twelve again, barefoot, sunburned, carefree, and riveted to the rock once again, because standing there in the shade of the tree was an elephant. A fully-grown African elephant, facing left, staring out to sea! A big elephant, but this time not white or male. A female with a left tusk broken off near the base, looking for all the world like the stub of a large cigar. I had never seen this elephant before, but I knew who she was, who she had to be. I recognized her from a colour photograph put out by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry under the title ‘The Last Remaining Knysna Elephant’. This was the Matriarch herself. But what was she doing here?
The thunder was gone. I could no longer feel it in my bones. I was awestruck, however, both by her and by the circumstances. She hadn’t been seen for months, but here she was where and when I needed her to be! That moment of hubris quickly passed as I began to understand. She was here because she no longer had anyone to talk to in the forest. She was standing here on the edge of the ocean because it was the next, nearest, and most powerful source of infrasound. The underrumble of the surf would have been well within her range, a soothing balm for an animal used to being surrounded, submerged, by low and comforting frequencies, by the lifesounds of a herd, and now this was the next-best thing!
My heart went out to her. The whole idea of the grandmother of many being alone for the first time in her life was tragic, conjuring up the vision of countless other old and lonely souls. But just as I was about to be consumed by helpless sorrow, something even more extraordinary took place …''
The throbbing was back in the air. I could feel it, and I began to understand why. The blue whale was on the surface again, pointed inshore, resting, her blowhole clearly visible. The Matriarch was here for the whale! The largest animal in the ocean and the largest living land animal were no more than a hundred yards apart, and I was convinced that they were communicating. In infrasound, in concert, sharing big brains and long lives, understanding the pain of high investment in a few precious offspring, aware of the importance and the pleasure of complex sociality, these rare and lovely great ladies were commiserating over the back fence of this rocky Cape shore, woman to woman, matriarch to matriarch, almost the last of their kind. |
