“Married woman with kids and hectic life seeks wild animal for meaningful relationship and connection with nature.”
As a kid I used to think I could talk to animals. Not in a Dr. Doolittle way, where I could decipher moos and clucks, but in an innocent “of course I can talk to the animals” kid-way. I spent every weekend, school holiday, and summer on my grandparents’ farm, so I was as familiar with Daisy the cow’s ornery moods as I was with Penny the hen’s laying habits and my grandfather’s tea-drinking schedule.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing I could talk to animals. I stopped really seeing animals too, and it suddenly makes me sad; I’ve lost my connection with nature. My cat’s just not cutting it—I want to see animals. Wild animals.
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park—Mountain Gorillas
Uganda
Photo source: Wikipedia
I just recently re-watched Gorillas in the Mist and was thinking how incredible it would be to see these gentle giants in their natural environment. Then I heard that the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (UNEP/CMS) will name 2009 the “Year of The Gorilla,” as part of the UN’s decade of education for sustainable development. Then I thought, how incredible would it be to see gorillas in the year of the gorilla? I long to pay my respects to the gorillas of the Congo, particularly since the 2007 massacre of five critically endangered mountain gorillas there. But because that area is so volatile, I might have to make do with reading the BBC’s diaries of two gorilla rangers. Or I could go gorilla trekking in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a dense rainforest, World Heritage Site, and home to half of the world’s population of mountain gorillas.
Wolf Haven International—Wolves
Tenino, WA
Photo source: Wikipedia
Once considered the “ultimate predator” of the northern hemisphere, the wolf is now classified as endangered in much of its former range in the U.S. I could take my chances and plan a week in Yellowstone National Park in Montana in the hopes that I would encounter one of the almost two hundred wild wolves living there, but two million acres of land allows too big a chance that our paths won’t cross. Instead, I’m thinking of visiting Wolf Haven International, a sanctuary for captive-born wolves, and one of only a handful of wolf recovery pre-release facilities in the U.S. and Mexico, where critically endangered wolves are placed for breeding and conditioning prior to release. I can channel my inner wolfman by attending a “howl-in,” camp overnight (and hope for a full moon!), take a photography class, attend lectures, or a three-day wildlife handling course where I can get up close and observe wolves in their natural habitat.
