Sankalai

The morning broke with the noise of the bush. A slight breeze and the hum of the never ending insect life: good, bad and ugly; with a pied-piper allusion of calm in the voices of the bird life. This day had begun like any other. But there was a different air about it.

I sensed a moment coming. The only question was, would I be ready for it when it came?

Moments don’t just happen though, they are the result of planning and execution. But regardless of the effort put into the ‘getting into that moment’, when it happens is never a known commodity.

You are in charge of the preparation, but not the execution.

Thus in reality we are never really in control, of anything – nor at any time, we only learn to ride the wave of the unknown, toward an exhilarating conclusion.

That’s the rush, the excitement, the draw of it all. Preparing for the ‘moment’ and getting ‘into it’, is the very heart and soul of HUNTING.

Hunting is not about killing. Hunting is about the ‘everything’ that leads up to a kill. You can hunt and never kill, but you can never ‘know the true power of the hunt’ without consummating the hunt with a kill. However, not every hunt must end in a kill to make it a good hunt. But one must experience the ‘mental and spiritual’ challenge that is in the kill… at least once, to appreciate the value and powerful responsibility that rests with the choice.

In the same way, we can experience a ‘moment’ by accident – it is what we call – luck. However, to bring everything, but the moment, into existence, this is the ultimate in a ‘moment experience’.

The scene that unfolded before me, later that day, in a split-second of time, was as unplanned as any in all my life.

I had no control of the ‘moment’.

I did have control of the use in ‘that moment’.

The camera found footing on the monopod.

The lens drew its focus.

The synapse began firing in reflex mode and the ‘hold’ was as smooth as any trigger hold ever executed. As in anything in life that exudes success, Timing is everything. And this ‘moment’ was all about timing.

When the shutter firing stopped, 14 frames of one of my most memorable experiences in life had been captured. And the span of that moment-in-time, was less than 24 seconds. The bulk of life is truly ‘the Journey and not the Destination’. But it will be the Destinations we look to for Journey justification and return.

I will return.

Thus, two months, 26 days, 12 hours, 14 minutes… and 23.7 seconds later… I had my bull elephant trophy.

And so do you.

[from the short-story fiction, Sankalai, based upon the eLITHOGRAPH© found HERE]

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africa, animal, big5, booth, botswanna, bull, elephant, elithograph, les, nature, ooakgallery, reiker, teinne and tusker