Last week or not...

“O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!”

~Edna St Vincent Millay

Thanda Sign

In moments like this, you learn how to live, trust your intuition, live your best life, & capture the moment by moment. You become friends very quickly with the people who you are with.  Some will have a familiar feeling that you have once meant before in a previous life.  When the stars are aligned you just know it, it’s a feeling of peace with that driving thirst of an adventure.

My days tend to blend into each other. From arriving back from Durban & Drakensberg it’s been crunch time. It’s my last week of the photography project at Thanda Private Game Reserve with African Impact. It’s a stressful one with many submissions & making sure that everything in my Lightroom Catalog is going smoothly with making sure to do a number of back up on external hard drives.  Luckily a friend has been very patient with me on my numerous Lightroom headaches that I have experience in the last week, but I’m very grateful that this friend of mine has taught me how to use the program correctly. I keep on teaching myself new things as well with the program. It’s never ending my learning curve; keep on expanding & growing is the nature of the game.

“Listen to the sound of silence.”

~Paul Simon

Warthogs Running

I have the privilege of going on a 3AM drive to see the creatures of the night. We only spotted like 4 lions. I heard my very first lion roar as well. I will admit that my night photography shoots are still not the greatest, even after I converted them into Black & White. I have noticed that my eye has changed since I have arrived here. It’s a beautiful thing indeed. I’ve been a wee bit more creative too with giving myself permission of being artsy with my post production. Yes, a friend of mine did pull that out of me as well. I have been playing more & more with contrast these days, to name a few of the things.

The reality of what your going to see is endless & it’s never planned out like a good screenplay with the perfect cast. I had an encounter with a very muddy elephant extremely closed to me while on a game of drive. It was cool to “actually eye an elephant” so to speak from the back of the range rover. I got soaked during a massive thunderstorm on one of the drives as well, but with a dose of silly positivity from my other friends we managed to survive it. We need the rain out here at Thanda, the watering holes are all dried up & with water as life force energy they need it survive. I would love to take a magic wand to transfer all of the snow that New England has received & place it into the watering holes for the wildlife. But unfortunately that will not work & global warming is a reality.  Also, I got to go to “Elephant Interaction” where I learnt all about the animal & got to touch it’s tongue, behind the ears, tusk & skin. It was pretty cool with the fact that I got to feed the elephants as well!

With my last week, it will be time to be saying good bye to the friends that I’ve meant during this past month. It will be hard cos in part it’s saying good bye to your family.  Funny, how my week just played out with “signs” from the universe & some encouragement from my father, that I have found myself rescheduling my itinerary to stay a wee bit longer out in the bush.  I do know that I’m met to be here for some reason & to help out certain people with my resources. However, since the photography project is only a month, I’m being moved over to the research department. I’m still got a photographer’s eye for detail with the heart center consciousness to developed beautiful photos out of what I see after I get that research shot.  It’s going to be quite the adventure…

"Deeply insightful, grounded, and thorough guided experience that has been expertly curated by two of the most influential spiritual leaders of our time.”

~ Patheos