gorillas in the midst

i just stumbled upon this video looking for something else. and when i watched the video i remembered the power of this experience and thought i'd blog about it now, since then i didn't have a blog . . .

this is video i took in 2006-ish. i had been working in rwanda and stayed over a weekend (before heading to kenya) to visit the sousa gorilla family. the sousa family was the family diane fossey studied.

Fossey was found murdered in the bedroom of her cabin in Virunga Mountains, Rwanda on December 26, 1985. The last entry in her diary read:

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future

i will never forget being there. rwanda was amazing in and of it self . . . this is a link to a blog i wrote after my second time in rwanda . . . there is a powerful sense of forgiveness and hope.

anyway, here i am being chased by a gorilla . . . i had been watching and taking photos of them. they were transfixing. they would look at you and it would feel like they were looking in your soul. the babies played and fought and needed codling. the old lady's sat around grooming each other. and the teen age boys tried to be the alpha male.

i was watching one too closely. i'd been told not to make eye contact because it can be threatening . . . but i couldn't help myself . . . and one of the teen boys got a little crush on me (or something). i must have accidently hit record when i was running away from the gorilla. he reached out and touched my back . . . which was CRAZY but the guides him and he ran away (they had tranquilizer guns if they needed them). . . i think about it now and it is crazy scary. but you can see in this, i have a high tolerance for adrenaline.

i kept messing up and saying gorillas in the midst (instead of in the mist), hence the title. they were actually in my midst, which was one of the coolest things ever!