One of my favorite moments this winter here in South Africa was with a group of trackers from White Pine Programs from Maine in the USA. We did a sunset “sit spot” one evening in the Waterberg Mountains. Sit spots are just a time where you sit by yourself, in silence, and push your awareness outward: sight, sound, smells, intuition, etc., and increase your awareness of your environment. There is a saying, “If you don’t have 10 minutes a day to sit in nature, you should sit for an hour”. It helps to put everything into perspective. That evening we only sat for about 20 minutes because it was getting dark, and , hey, elephants and leopards and stuff… but what a magical 20 minutes it was! Participant extraordinaire Amy Beal gave me this video of these eastern rock elephant shrews beginning their evening’s nocturnal activities. We saw over 50 mammal species on this trip (51 to be exact, if I count the red hartebeest that some of us saw on the way to the airport) and this one was my clear favorite.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLAXNmXQ4Qs[/embedyt]