I had dozed, but awoke to the sense that something huge had happened. Huge and warm, like receding thunder.
I wasn’t frightened. Instead, my heart ached with anticipation. I edged forward through the bracken and saw something so beautiful, so perfect, it nearly blinded me.
It seemed to be frozen absolutely still and yet in massive, turbulent motion. It was dull as smoke, in places utterly black, but elsewhere there rippled and glowed colossal celestial halls of gold and blue.
It was both enormous and strangely intimate. I had never felt so small, so overwhelmed and confounded as I was now, by this impossibly beautiful thing… and yet so incredibly large—a part of its immensity. I knew if I were to speak, I would speak with its voice.
It roiled like a hurricane across the clearing to the pool, and drank with a clarity and humility reserved for gods. I was beyond captivated. All the weight of failure and shame I had been carrying since my loss was lifted. I wanted it to raise me up into itself. I wanted desperately to live forever in the folds of its luminous, billowing chasms. For here was endless Grace, indifferent to blame, a chorus of laughter, fearless.
Ah, endless Grace. We achieve only fleeting moments of it and yet constantly search for it. And if we could speak with voices other than our own – that’s why I write about elephants. To translate their voices and lives into human words.