A week ago, while paddling back to Tobermory from an overnight expedition to the northern coastline of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula, I was delighted to find myself once more in the presence of a large pod of Bottlenose Dolphins which, uninhibited, swam alongside me in my kayak for a good twenty minutes or so. A few folk when seeing the film footage I took of that incredible moment, have commented on being fearful during the encounter, asking if I was worried the Dolphins would have a go at me.

I am staying with my parents for a week. They live in the attractive market town of Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire and it’s always lovely to visit them to be royally treated with plenty to eat and drink. They seem to forget I am now close to sixty years old and the metabolism of their once lithe, energetic and healthily fit son, is not as it was. I invariably end up returning home feeling the added centimetres to my portly girth. Nevertheless, the family evenings, sitting around the dining table after a gastronomic meal accompanied with generous libations invariably turn to convivial family reminiscing of our long ago lives lived in Africa. My Dad in particular, enthrals me with his many stories of his bush adventures, in particular the many fishing expeditions he enjoyed to the languid waters of the Zambezi River above the then very small town of Kazangula. However, it is his tales of his time as a Patrol Officer at the remote police station of Tuli which I love to hear him recount, even if they are repetitive renditions of familiar stories. The experiences he speaks with great passion about, occurred for him when he was a young man in his early twenties. If you ever meet my Dad, be sure to ask him about his beloved Shashi River in the Tuli Circle, or the time he came face to face with a lioness under a tree log, or the herd of elephants his faithful hound called Chaka Zulu, made his way through to reach my Dad at one of his regular nights out under the stars while on patrol. Each of these stories and the many others he tells, are made all the more richer for me, because I understand and can feel his eloquent descriptions of the sights, sounds and scents of the African bush around him.

In my early and formative years, I would regularly join my Dad on his longer patrols through the lowveld of what is now Zimbabwe but what was then Rhodesia. I would sit perched on the edge of a Series II Landrover seat, gasping in the dust laden coolish air sweeping in from the wide open air vents below the windscreen, as we rattled our way along corrugated dirt roads, these leading deep into the expansive hinterland of cattle ranches and farms. This was the 1960s and even then, this corner of Africa was relatively wild and untamed and it was common place to see the wildlife one associates with the African wilderness. My memories of these experiences are the clearest I have of when my love and passion for wildness became an integral part of my sense of being. It was on these trips where I learned from my Dad the skill of walking silently in the bush, how to sit perfectly still for hours at a time, honing my senses of sight, sound and smell to indicate when wildlife was close by. My patience of inaction was always repaid with wonderful wildlife encounters when unsuspecting animals would emerge before us when we were often perched out of sight on a rocky kopje. Through his deep understanding of the natural world around him, my Dad instilled in me a similar sense of personal comfort within the natural realm, where I was a part of the ecosystem around me, never frightened of it, but respectful of my place within it.

Now I’m nearing my sixties, I too have a range of tales I’m able to recount of my wilderness adventures, and similar to my Dad, they often involve wonderfully intimate encounters with wildlife. In fact, I’m so blessed to have a huge repertoire of such moments, that I’m often loathe to share them for fear of becoming a bore, or worse still, to be viewed as a braggart. No, the tales I have to tell are only shared when I am at my most comfortable and I sense the people listening to me will have some understanding of the depth of meaning to these stories, for they are redolent in allegory and metaphor.

One such tale I love to share, is the one where I encountered an African Rock Python when I was working as the Chief Instructor at the Outward Bound Centre in the foothills of the wild and rugged Chimanimani Mountains. The Outward Bound centre nestled against the flanks of the imposing mountains, hidden from sight by the surrounding foothills and thick brachestegia bhundu (bush). Twenty kilometres from the nearest town, the centre was an idyll for someone like me who thrived on wild isolation and deep immersion in wildness. One day, I decided to scout a number of locations for a large orienteering course I had designed which would test the navigational map reading skills of the course participants. This involved walking through the geographically featureless bush on compass bearings while pacing out the distances in metres. Part of the route of the orienteering course followed a long descending ridge along one of the lines of red earthed foothills. The ridge was heavily forested with muzhanji (mahobohobo) and msasa trees, the former littering the sun dappled grounds of these groves with cardboard dry leaves which crackled like gunshots under the feet of unimaginative walkers. To move silently through this bush was to acquire the art of agilely stepping from rock to rock and not touching the ground. In this way, I could move rapidly and silently through the forest, keeping my eyes open for timid bush buck, raucous baboons or even handsome eland antelope. On this day though, I encountered none of these though I could hear the baboons barking and shouting amongst themselves some distance away further up the Mangowe river valley. I ascended the low foothills and found myself on my chosen ridge line where I intended to place a couple of control points for the orienteering exercise. I had a couple of hours to complete my task and while this was certainly enough, it meant I couldn’t loiter.

The ridge was topped with long stretches of flat beds of sandstone rock, delightfully peppered with wonderfully coloured lichen. As I walked along this ridge, stepping as I was from rock to rock, avoiding the disasterously noisy Muzhanji leaves, I was suddenly confronted with an awareness that this was python country and I was going to meet a python. It was nothing more than that, a flash of realisation. I had gone no further than a couple of hundred metres along the ridge, scampering from one flat bed of rock to the other, like a slowly descending staircase shrouded in trees, when as I stepped down onto the next flat bed ahead, there lying in front of me, stretched out in its entirety was an African Rock Python. As with any of my snake encounters in the bush, my immediate instinct was to stop, stock still, choosing not to alarm the snake into taking protective action by attacking me. So it was, I found myself, standing a metre away from what was most definitely a fine looking python. This was the first python I had encountered at close quarters in wild, having only seen them from afar until this moment. As instinct instructed me to do so, I stood silent and perfectly still, watching the stretched out snake fro any indication it felt threatened by me. It is rare for these snakes to attack humans, so I was not fearing for my safety as such, though I have heard of them inflicting nasty ragged poison-less bites on people who have tussled with them. This particular snake did not seem perturbed at all. It had not raised its head or even flinched at my presence. It simply with what seemed lazy regularity, flickered its tongue, tasting the air and undoubtedly summing me up as I was it.

I’m no snake expert, so there was no way I could determine this, but I immediately saw the snake as a she - a female. I think it was her placidity and her incredible beauty which caused me to decide this. At three metres in length she was huge, and despite lying dormant on the sun baked bed of sandstone, she looked immensely powerful. Her beauty was almost indescribable. She had a strong flat speared shaped head with bright black eyes which were unblinkingly fixed on me. Her snout was slightly upturned and her flickering tongue heightened this perception. Her body was relaxed, her weight spread out on the sun heated reddish rock beneath her. I couldn’t help it, but I stepped, very slowly, toward her and making sure I wasn’t too close to her head, squatted on my haunches beside her. Now she seemed immense and for the first time I noticed the intricate richness of her colouration and markings. It was if she had freshly oiled herself because her skin gleamed in the sun and it was too much of a temptation not to - I reached out and ran my hand lightly along her spine, delighting in her surprising dry warmth and the evident sense of life pulsing through her. Again she did not flinch and I stroked her again, this time lingering as I did so, as if by doing this, I was gaining a deeper connection. She continued to lie placidly beside me on the rock and I was able to take in the sophisticated complexity of her markings. I was certain I could see tinges of rich purple and other iridescent colours which all melded perfectly together to created the variegated brown hues of her simple and effective bush camouflage of a seemingly roman mosaic inspired pattern of whorls and blotches.

Then, with the merest of whispers, she began to slide over the rock towards the step I had descended a few minutes earlier. Here there was a crevice which she slowly disappeared into, winding herself coil upon mighty coil in the tight niche. I briefly looked away and when looking back at her hiding place, was shocked at how difficult I found it to make her out, such was the effectiveness of her camouflage. She had decided our meeting had to come to an end and it was time for me to be on my way. I wanted to hang around, to see if she came out into the sun again, but I knew she was in there to stay until I had long departed. It was with a lightness in my step and a sudden sense of internal peace that I continued my way along the ridge, almost forgetting to scout the locations for the orienteering markers. My brief interaction with this beautiful python had impacted me hugely and continues to do so to this day, a good twenty nine years after it occurred. In recalling this experience, as I often do, I easily transport myself to that arbitrary location on the nameless ridge in the Chimanimani foothills, remembering with vividness her colours, her size and the warm dryness of her skin. It was a moment I have similarly experienced since then with wild creatures (deer, seals, otters and dolphins), but remains the one I most often choose to recount. I think this is because it was such a very special encounter for me. Pythons are relatively rare sightings in the African bush and certainly to come across one so placid and unperturbed was a privilege for me. I have long since pondered how it was I sensed I would come across the snake before doing so. I by no means have the power of second sight, but when I think about this, I have enjoyed similar premonitions with my wildlife encounters. Indeed, as I set off from home in my kayak in the morning last week, I had a strong feeling I would encounter the dolphins again and I was not surprised when they came up behind me. I think because I do not fear the nature I chance upon, I’m open to the wonderful possibilities these intimate moments have to offer. I know that there is always something for me to learn and gain from these interactions.

So, as I write this, I’m aware of how grateful I am to both my parents for imbuing me with a passionate love for all things wild. The six year old boy who assiduously walked silently and barefoot behind his father whenever out in the bush, became the man who continues to pass as silently as he can through the Scottish west coast seas he happily now calls his home.