Someone who shares the deeply participative joy of being in this place.
That he shares the beauty in the same way that I do is beyond question.
But to say so, is to stand accused of that original scientific sin; anthropomorphism.
Yet in truth to be anthropomorphic is to recognise human traits in animals and to accept animal like traits in humans.
It is to fully engage in the lingua franca of our common wildness and to experience the true connectivities of all life.
These animistic connections form the primal language and it is one which flowed with ease from the tongue before that original sin clothed it with shame and we reluctantly left the garden.
Then in these later circumscribed times science has sought to limit it with reason as progress crushed the native and their ways underfoot.
This immense animate conversation continues though and does so without us.
It surrounds us with an unimaginably beautiful and wild lexicon.
Deep inside, our souls are bereft at this separation from the feral and for too many this feeds the great emptiness within.
However the keepers of the flame and our guides and interpreters may still be found in both the wildest and saddest corners of this small blue planet.
For it resides within the heart of the Bushman and in the songlines of the Aborigine, it is found in the dreadful squalor of the reservation and the shrinking rainforests.
Embarking on our own journey of rewilding and the reindigenisation of our tamed selves we need fully embrace this essential anthropomorphic essence of humanity.
It is also with great irony that to do so, means that we must go to these reservations, not only to ask for forgiveness, but to humbly ask for their guidance and wisdom and how we may reengage with the wild.
Photo courtesy of the author.