I will never forget hearing the first roar from a lion. My entire body filled with adrenaline, fear, anxiety, total alertness. It is a sound that cuts straight to the center of your chest, an emotional reaction that feels today the same way it must have felt to humans thousands of years ago. We would cruise around, tracking paw prints in the sand. It was always breathtaking when we found our animal, it was always the most beautiful thing.
There were these wonderfully quiet moments where we would just sit in silence among the wild and all the world felt in perfect harmony. In contrast we had other times where we were speeding through the African tundra, chasing a lioness on the run, our hearts racing! “Tattle tail” birds would scream warnings of the predator on the move while giraffe, zebras, and impalas ran for their lives. Fear and adrenaline pump through your blood, a high we felt for hours. Being in the presence of something much stronger and more powerful than you, understanding and observing the circle of life, how it is such a beautiful balance, makes you respect and appreciate the world just as it is when it just IS. The quiet way elephants migrate past you or the feeling in your soul when a lion looks you right in the eye…
Written and Photographed by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg
Rich Laburn is filmmaker, photographer and writer who is based at Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa. Spending his time capturing scenes of the wild and communicating the beauty of the African bushveld, he runs the Londolozi Blog as a way to entertain and engage people wishing to visit these wild lands.
