THE LION & TIGER DIARIES: Saturday, Aug. 6th, 2016

As we turned onto Soledad Canyon Road, a pungent, burnt moss smell filled our noses. Within a half mile, the rolling hills touched by light green changed to scorched and barren. Blackened hillsides, trees turned to standing charcoal skeletons, charred and abandoned campsites— the landscape resembled a post-apocalyptic nightmare, all covered with a heavy, bluish haze. Did I mention the heat? At eleven am, it was already over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sheer magnificence, obvious intelligence and nobility are a few reasons big cats are great to be around. But the feeling one gets from proximity to the cats is hard to categorize. Mysterious, subtle, ecstatic– I can only liken the experience to a state of high consciousness. Big cats are naturally in meditation. They are the Kshatriya of the animal world. Noble warriors of high spiritual attainment.

Yet, there is a poignant quality as well. Lions, tigers, leopards, in fact ALL wild cat populations, are in rapid decline across the globe. The attrition is astonishingly fast. Some reports say that up to 90% of wild lions and tigers have disappeared in the last twenty years alone. Hunters killing lions is the moral equivalent of allowing people to go after Buddhist monks for sport. Only a monster of low consciousness would kill such a creature.

Once inside the preserve, we find the cats changed by the fire, but not in the way we expected. They are active, prowling, moving about in the intense midday heat. Not anxious or traumatized, the cats seem, well… HAPPY. A couple of them react to Darby as a house cat might, rubbing their heads on the fence near him, greeting him affectionately. Yes, they are getting food, but we’ve been here before at feeding time, and they were not like this. At first, we assume that perhaps they are still riled up from the danger, maybe adrenaline is still in their systems. But Darby tells us that they were mostly calm during the blaze, except for when the Black Hawk helicopters were flying 400 feet overhead to make a water drop.

Love to All.

S. C. Light