Gorillas like me

You may think of this title in one of at least two ways.

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Mountain gorillas, silverbacks amongst them. There’s more than enough beauty here.

They are magnificent creatures. They live a simple, rich life that we have made fragile, endangered. Their home we have made unhomely.

Here in these mountains and volcanoes, a peaceful truce has been reached between us, humans and gorillas, a coexistence supported by hundreds of people and an entire industry of conservation and tourism. This confirms the death of the wild, for which I now feel a terrible pang of loss, of grief. And yet, there are signs suggesting that this agreement holds promise: as it stands, it allows for the silverback gorillas to live in their habitat, for the locals to benefit from their existence, and for visitors to be in their midst.

And there I go, another in a long line of visitors who trek daily to spend an hour with them as part of this productized experience. We visit the park, we get briefed by park rangers, and we set off for a long drive to the starting point of our hike. We then hike, our guides communicating with trackers, narrowing our window for a possible encounter.

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All throughout the day, since about 5:30 in the morning and including this arduous hike, I’ve heard some version of this phrase being repeated: “Gorillas, they are just like us, they are our cousins”. Rangers, guides, fellow visitors, they all seem to reach out for it, egging each other on in the face of… fear? Cynicism? Coming to terms with the real possibility for disappointment? I’m not sure but it’s one of those phrases I disagree with but I don’t know why, and my mind won’t stop thinking about it. I like the spirit of it, for it points to our connection with them, our interrelatedness. But if feels wrong because it is not exactly true.

We make another stop along our hike. Our guide, Mr. T, tells us we are close to the gorillas. We are at a junction, he says, and this is where we must put our packs down and our face masks up. There is fresh, silvery grey gorilla dung on the ground next to where I put my small backpack. This is the last “chamber” before our meeting, our encounter. Here, all the anticipation peaks, and for the next hour I am part of a group of humans spending time with an endangered species of primate that exists only in three countries in the world.

I see my first gorilla, then another. And then my first silverback. What happens during the next hour is difficult to put into words. I’ve been thinking about it since, mulling it over. I was in awe and I was afraid, threatened. I was doing something “epic”, one of those sanctioned and veritable “once in a lifetime” experiences you may or may not get to do, and there was a trace of sadness.

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When you move deep into Nature, you enter its space. Sounds sharpen, movements change, danger grows. Awe comes at you not in the form of fragments, intelligible, but as a cloud, an aura that surrounds you and dissolves your fixed core: You’re in my zone now.

The thick, lush rainforest I been hiking through takes on a new dimension, and it pulls my mind and body into an outer space of green, right here on earth, where magnificent creatures roam. I am no longer separate.

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In the midst of this family of mountain gorillas, I get glimpses of the familiarity we seek to reclaim, they are just like us. It is, I realize, a kind of apology. But I don’t see myself in them, I don’t experience recognition.

What I experience is being overwhelmed by awe. Confronted by the strange, implausible character of our meeting, amplifying my confused feelings of admiration and threat. These gorillas can kill me in an instant, but they need human collaboration to survive. I am powerless to their might, the same way they are powerless to the myopic progress of humanity.

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Gratefully, I keep coming back to this: there is more than enough beauty here.

Mountain gorillas, silverbacks amongst them. Their size, which is not only large but monumental. Their dexterity. The lazy peacefulness of the adults, the playfulness of the younglings. Their gregariousness. My threatened, awe-stricken mind is feeding me useful fragments in real-time: their diet is vegetarian, consisting of more than 200 species of plants, from which they also get the water they need; they need to eat for most of their waking hours to meet their dietary needs; they live in families; the silverbacks, the older males, can weigh up to 250 kilo (more than 500 pounds). As of two years ago, they are no longer a critically endangered species…

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There are no barriers or fences between us, no other side of the glass. I can reach out and touch them; they can do the same. I can run and they can outrun me. We share the same space. In Nature.

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I don’t expect this, but it is how they move what captivates me most. As I stand and sit amongst them they lounge lazily in a sloped clearing of tall grass. It’s time for a nap, falling somewhere between the previous meal and the next. Some of them nap peacefully, some stretch out on the grass, some pick at some leafy plant, eating, some of them walk to rejoin the family with babies on their backs, and the toddlers rough-and-tumble. They are going about what must amount to about their most boring, mundane routines. And yet I’m still floored with awe.

Why is that? I’m reminded, again, that they are an endangered species. This is true, but that’s not it. Their every idle, lazy move is infused with beauty and intelligence and magic. But why?…and then they show me: two silverbacks get up to walk on all fours, and they jostle each other, adult rough-and-tumble play. They can flow effortlessly between casual laziness and raw power. They are masters of mobility, and they move heavy bodies in ways that part with logic, as if they are made of water. They can kill me in an instant, and yet they don’t.

At about two feet away from them, I can tell you that this power, this reality, is undeniably palpable in their every move. Inescapable and marvelous. I’ve never felt closer and more unlike gorillas like me.