Mind the Lion: The Gifts Outside the Fence

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d say: I tracked lions deep in the wild bush of Zimbabwe.

It was not a lifelong dream. Just six weeks ago a friend offered me the opportunity to do a “walking safari” in Zimbabwe—a short puddle-jumper ride from a leadership workshop we were leading in Zambia.

“We will walk with lions in the wild, one might even charge us, it’s incredible,” he said. I had questions (I usually do): “Why would we do that? Do you have a death wish? Is it a vacation if it centers around the pursuit of terror? We pay for this fear?”

But after several conversations and a few anxiety dreams, I agreed. I’m in a season of saying “yes” to new things, especially when some risk is involved, so this felt like it fit the bill. It will be “life-altering,” I heard. I like a good alter because I live for a good story.

Six weeks and a lot of gear-shopping later, I’m walking through dirt, brush, and thorns under a wide-brimmed hat and an unobstructed sun. Walking safaris are rare as the training and requirements for licensing a guide to take guests on foot miles into the wild, away from the protection of vehicles, is rigorous and lengthy. But our two guides each had 40 years of experience in this bush. I stayed close on their heels as they scoured the earth for tracks, listened to the telling sounds of baboons keeping watch in the trees, and scanned the horizon for our biggest threats (lone buffalo, a female elephant with her calf, a hippo headed for water).

They knew the habits and read the moods of the animals. They told us what to watch and listen for. They carried large rifles. And they had a few tragic stories, all of which fell under the chapter heading “A Human Didn’t Follow Instructions.” I was determined to follow instructions, the most important of which was “Do Not Run. Ever.”

We walked numerous miles each day, encountered many animals in their home territory, and had incredible close (and I’d say spiritual) interactions with enormous elephants, but the male lion we had been tracking for days continued to escape us. Male lions are notoriously elusive, moving constantly and unpredictably, often backtracking their path. On our first day, we came close. As we rounded a large clump of thick brush, our guide brought us to a sudden stop with an abrupt outstretched hand and finger to his mouth. A pair of hind legs and a tail disappeared promptly and soundlessly into the brush about twelve feet in front of us. We never saw his face.

On the third day, we were hot on the trail of, based on prints, a large male lion. A small group of us decided to get a jumpstart with the guides in the heat of the afternoon (normally nap time) because fresh tracks were located near a dry river bed. We drove to the location, climbed down into the sandy bed at the point our lion entered, not long ago, and walked in silence, close together, in a straight line as instructed. The scene was eerie, our senses heightened to every twig snapping under our feet or rustling in the embankment.

While we normally walked through vast flat terrain, scanning the horizon from right to left for wildlife, we were now constricted in the narrow river bed, with no trees to hide us, exposed to anything hiding in the bush on either side of the cavern. The impalas and baboons that typically offered signals about the presence or absence of predators (scattering and squawking when one is spotted, peacefully eating when no danger is sensed) were nowhere to be found. The hair on my arms raised with the sense that we were being watched. “It’s very Jurassic Park in here,” my friend whispered.

My rapid heartbeat and the flies buzzing under our hats were the only sound. My friend swatted at the flies and made a small sound of annoyance. “Mind the flies, miss the lion,” I mouthed to him in warning and then smirked to myself about all of the applications in my life of this sentiment. Despite being lost in thought for a moment, I realized that our guides had come to a sudden halt. One pointed to the ground next to us where he located a large and fresh indent in the sand where our lion had recently stopped to rest near a log. We are close. My hand reached out to grip my friend’s backpack as he walked in front of me. To an observer, this would appear to be a tactic to keep him between me and the lion (I won’t deny the thought entered my mind), but the instinct was to create a signal to my body: “Do. Not. Run.”

There was no mind-wandering now. We rounded bends quietly and expectantly. The smells, colors, and sounds of the riverbed were heightened as our survival needs demanded full presence in the present. I noticed my paradoxical heart held equally the desire to find the lion and the desire to not find the lion.

I wonder if you think you know the end to this little story. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you what didn’t happen. We didn’t find the lion. Miles later, we followed the tracks out of the riverbed and into a vast plain with no lion in sight and a setting sun warning us to get back to camp. In the jeep headed home, I turned to my friend as we bounced in our seats and said “Are you disappointed?” “Nope,” he said, “you?” “No,” I said, surprised with myself, “that was incredible.”

I laid in bed that night and listened to the elephant chewing outside my tent and pondered this experience and its relationship to the work of growth in my life. That day we had set out to accomplish something scary and thrilling at the same time. We showed up in our minds, bodies, and spirits in new ways to accomplish it. We didn’t see the lion. And we left with new courage, energy, adrenaline, intimacy, presence, trust, and the story and sweat of the chase. This is the gift of the journey to spaces outside the fence of what we believe is possible for us. This is the fuel created by “impossibly” scary-exciting, and often risky, goals. We don’t always see the lion, and what if we get what we are after anyway?

No doubt, I still want to lock eyes with that lion and hear him roar into my soul. I want that story. So the journey continues.