On Wednesday, Robbie and I visited the Safari Park of the San Diego Zoo. I had been looking forward to this for weeks, so much so that I was eager to get up early (for me) so that we could head out into the hills to be first in line at the park before the August sun drove us and the animals indoors. I managed to get up, dressed and into the car with only the merest pinch of whining...and that all for show.
The park is about an hours drive from San Diego, up in the camouflage colors hills near Encinada. When I first moved to California the summer hills, all camel and worn out green looking, made me think of a dog with the mange. They looked like their hair had fallen out in tufts and that they had a distinctive and unpleasant itch. I see them differently now, at least a little. The tans and camels are not all the same. The greeny black splotches are little oasis of shade for the creatures that scratch out a life there. I can even see in the grasses a gracefulness, the capacity to move freely, that the lush undergrowth of my home state does not allow.
Anyway, we made the drive easily, traffic parting like the seas, and turned off onto the country road that lead to the park without so much as another car in sight. We passed well watered vineyards, dilapidated sheds with hand painted signs for ostrich eggs and local honey. The road almost seemed sticky with it. I was in a foreign land.
The park was everything I wanted it to be. The early crowd was thin. Misting stations sat next to ice cream stands. Impossibly crowned birds peeked from behind bushes and one, an elegant crowned tinamou, even allowed us a peek at her jade green egg. Robbie and I were caught trying to poach a feather by a wonderful keeper named Tom who showed us the egg. (At the end of the day, when we came back for one more peek at the tinamou, Tom, surreptitiously tucked a small ibis feather in my pack. It was an offering.)
The reason I write tonight, however, is to tell you about the Rhino sisters. We took a special cart safari that allowed us a close up look at some of the animals out in the wide spaces habitats. There, bunched up together under a sturdy shade tree, sat about six female rhinoceroses. Our guide, Casey told us that they were a part of conservation project to help to save the rhinos.
For years rhinos steadfastly refused to breed in captivity. Every possible enticement was used to encourage it, but none of the healthy breeding pairs produced. Finally, by happenstance, they learned that female rhinos, when deprived of the company of other females will suppress their hormones so as not to conceive. They do this because in the wild they need to have several adult females to protect a calf from predators. I mean why go through an 18 month gestation just to have the little guy gotten by a lion while a baby? Without a 'sisterhood' they would have none of it. When several females bonded into a group, called a crash (don't you love it), then they felt save to conceive, brought their hormones up to speed and had at it. More than 50 of the endangered calfs have been born this way.
And there they were, a crash of rhino sisters under a tree in the summer sun, each taking a turn looking after the one young calf. Huge, funny looking, 800 pound headed things, under a shade tree taking turns baby sitting. It takes a crash.
As we lumbered around the park on our little cart with the impossibly bright, young, blond and beautiful Casey calling all of these amazing animals by name, I felt the truth of life well up in me. The truth of this amazing life: it takes a crash. In the very heart of creation lies the truth we all know, that without community, without others to share the load, without a tribe to call our own, ones who know all, see all and accept all, the tender young shoots of our own lives would be too vulnerable to bring forth either.
Without a crash, everything we are created to bring forth is stopped in its very tracks. This is why I continue with church. This is why I will go back tomorrow, after a long and luscious vacation, and take one more crack at it all. Because it takes a crash.
The park is about an hours drive from San Diego, up in the camouflage colors hills near Encinada. When I first moved to California the summer hills, all camel and worn out green looking, made me think of a dog with the mange. They looked like their hair had fallen out in tufts and that they had a distinctive and unpleasant itch. I see them differently now, at least a little. The tans and camels are not all the same. The greeny black splotches are little oasis of shade for the creatures that scratch out a life there. I can even see in the grasses a gracefulness, the capacity to move freely, that the lush undergrowth of my home state does not allow.
Anyway, we made the drive easily, traffic parting like the seas, and turned off onto the country road that lead to the park without so much as another car in sight. We passed well watered vineyards, dilapidated sheds with hand painted signs for ostrich eggs and local honey. The road almost seemed sticky with it. I was in a foreign land.
The park was everything I wanted it to be. The early crowd was thin. Misting stations sat next to ice cream stands. Impossibly crowned birds peeked from behind bushes and one, an elegant crowned tinamou, even allowed us a peek at her jade green egg. Robbie and I were caught trying to poach a feather by a wonderful keeper named Tom who showed us the egg. (At the end of the day, when we came back for one more peek at the tinamou, Tom, surreptitiously tucked a small ibis feather in my pack. It was an offering.)
The reason I write tonight, however, is to tell you about the Rhino sisters. We took a special cart safari that allowed us a close up look at some of the animals out in the wide spaces habitats. There, bunched up together under a sturdy shade tree, sat about six female rhinoceroses. Our guide, Casey told us that they were a part of conservation project to help to save the rhinos.
For years rhinos steadfastly refused to breed in captivity. Every possible enticement was used to encourage it, but none of the healthy breeding pairs produced. Finally, by happenstance, they learned that female rhinos, when deprived of the company of other females will suppress their hormones so as not to conceive. They do this because in the wild they need to have several adult females to protect a calf from predators. I mean why go through an 18 month gestation just to have the little guy gotten by a lion while a baby? Without a 'sisterhood' they would have none of it. When several females bonded into a group, called a crash (don't you love it), then they felt save to conceive, brought their hormones up to speed and had at it. More than 50 of the endangered calfs have been born this way.
And there they were, a crash of rhino sisters under a tree in the summer sun, each taking a turn looking after the one young calf. Huge, funny looking, 800 pound headed things, under a shade tree taking turns baby sitting. It takes a crash.
As we lumbered around the park on our little cart with the impossibly bright, young, blond and beautiful Casey calling all of these amazing animals by name, I felt the truth of life well up in me. The truth of this amazing life: it takes a crash. In the very heart of creation lies the truth we all know, that without community, without others to share the load, without a tribe to call our own, ones who know all, see all and accept all, the tender young shoots of our own lives would be too vulnerable to bring forth either.
Without a crash, everything we are created to bring forth is stopped in its very tracks. This is why I continue with church. This is why I will go back tomorrow, after a long and luscious vacation, and take one more crack at it all. Because it takes a crash.
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