There’s such truth in the saying that “When one door closes, another opens.” We recently experienced this in technicolour. Believe it or not, regular readers and long-time friends: Dave made a momentous decision 3 weeks ago, namely to retire from motorbike racing (after an on-off period of around 35 years). He’ll still ride of course, when he feels like it, but is relaxing into the freedom of choice
This implies a significant time and energy boost for our photographic and property businesses. So guess what happened? Less than a week later, a phenomenal filming project emerged, at very short notice, which we were freshly in a position to embrace. It entailed an epic 2 week adventure (and ongoing participation) that aims to help save rhino’s from potentially imminent extinction (due to wide-scale poaching for their horn) – a cause that’s especially close to our hearts being wildlife photographers.
We’ll share details of this project as time goes by, but I can’t resist posting a few photo’s from our trip, to give you a peek into what we’ve been up to, for the lion’s share of the last 2 weeks. The above image shows Dave in action, followed by just one of the spectacular sunset scenes we were treated to:
Rhino's at sunset - South Africa
. . . and a particular highlight in the form of meeting Smurf, an utterly adorable 6-week-old rhino. Smurf’s mom abandoned him, probably due to inexperience as he’s her first-born, with the result that he’s being hand-reared – currently on milk, fed to him from 2 l coke bottles. You can’t imagine how swiftly he glugs it! That stunningly soft mouth suckles almost anything that moves, around knee height, including our video camera:
Smurf the Rhino Calf sucking Dave's video camera!
While we were off in the bush, our beloved Jina vanished on an adventure of her own, which sent her missing in action for a full week. She left while we were away and my stepson was kindly looking after things for us, only to return at midnight on Friday. THANK YOU all who commented so understandingly on my Facebook post – correctly guessing how heart-wrenching this was! I’m so happy to share this pic of her in our garden, along with the news of her safe return, albeit painfully thin. It goes without saying that we’re in the process of spoiling her as much as possible
Our beautiful Jina, who is safely home!
For those who don’t know, Jina is a Wegie (Norwegian Forest Cat), one of the most recently domesticated breeds of cats . . . and it shows. Still, we wouldn’t change her for the world!
What is it about wild things that wrings our hearts inside out? I reckon it has to do with their innate sense of freedom and unfettered “beingness”, which us humans could do so well to emulate, rather than raping what remains of our natural heritage – with rhino’s being in the direct line of fire.
