Adventures in Wildness: How the African Bush Awakens the Human Spirit
There is an aliveness in the African bush. And in many other natural places in the world, but the African bush is where I find it the easiest to access and experience it with effortless awareness.
Perhaps one of the elements that makes the African bush so special, at least in several places in South Africa where I’ve been, is that for years the natural state of the land was suppressed by overhunting and aggressive agriculture of crops that nature didn’t plant here.
The people who lived there for a time, often intruders from faraway lands, tried to force the land to their will. Because of this, the land was damaged and unable to support its normal flora and fauna. Native plants diminished or disappeared, then drainage eroded the residual vegetation, and the animals fled when they could and perished when they couldn’t. And the cultures that grew here nearly suffered a similar fate.
But by the recent care of humans, working with nature, working together, the wildness has been reclaimed and restored. It now provides opportunities for tourists, both local and distant, to enjoy this natural state. It also furnishes employment for the local communities as well as services like education and healthcare.
When you venture into the bush and immerse in the experience, that aliveness can be reawakened within you too. You can relax into the present so easily. The past with all its conflicts, the future will all its worries fade from your view and mental landscape until you are just here and now. In this reclaimed and thriving bush country.
Twice daily there are game drives. On these drives, you see the wild animals who have never known captivity or anything other than their own alive nature. And they see you. You can see this in their posture, their gaze, and their actions.
Often on these drives, you drive offroad, following a predator, temporarily flattening small bushes and trees. The vehicle ventures between closely grown branches, while you duck down and in to avoid getting ripped by the thorns. You want to look up to see if you’re clear of the bushes, for sight is the sense we’ve become accustomed to relying on the most in the industrialized world.
But sight is not actually needed to be conscious that you’re out of the thickets (and it can be dangerous until the vehicle clears the thorny bushes). You will know you are clear of the branches when the sounds of them scraping the vehicle subside and the vehicle's speed picks up again.
You also learn to listen for the sound of the antelope species’ alarm bark, the baboon’s shout, and the calling birds to tell you where the predator has moved to now. Relying on these additional senses is part of your reawakened aliveness.
While walking in an area that was a driving route and now is returning to the forest, you see signs of thriving plants reclaiming the road. And the signs of the animal occupants are there as well. There are old tracks of leopards, more recent tracks of marauding baboons and curious mongoose, two quills dropped from a porcupine and a feather from a guinea fowl.
Some of the great trees of this forest are thought to be 2000 years old. They have survived the changes that have been wrought on the land, living on the remains of an ancient ocean bed that once occupied this area and left behind sand as fine as any beach.
In that moment you realize that you are now part of that forest too, leaving your tracks behind. A recognition dawns that you are not merely in the forest but of the forest.
Not everyone will have the opportunity to travel to the African bush. Luckily, awareness of the aliveness and your place in it can occur anywhere. All you have to do is become present. It sounds so easy, but it isn’t in our modern world of activity, productivity, and distractions.
The trick is to find some place or some activity, where it is easy. And then learn how to access it at other times.
Try places in nature. Just be there with all of your senses and attention.
Then notice moments of flow and pure engagement in activities you love, when time disappears and you merge into the activity and the sense of being alive it brings.
And what, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with medicine? I was asking myself this as I began writing what was on my mind and heart for this blog post. You see, sometimes I plan out what I want to write, and other times something insists on being written. It forms in my mind before I even know where I’m going with it.
So here it is. I am willing to bet that there are moments when you are doing your job, whether it is in medicine or not, where this aliveness is present. And also moments in your life outside of a job where you experience that too.
Maybe it’s taking exemplary and compassionate care of a patient who is sick and afraid. Maybe it’s during surgery when the case is going exceptionally well, exactly how you’d planned. Maybe it’s helping a colleague who is struggling. Maybe it’s when you’re working with your team. Maybe it’s when you’re teaching and the student just “gets it”. Maybe it’s when you complete a project and know you’ve done the best you could.
This aliveness is available to you right now, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Take a moment to find it either in what you are currently doing or have recently done. And then figure out how to go find a lot more of it.
