I am all alone in the forest, since my mom died all those years ago, I walk the paths I make alone. It’s a wonder my large body can slip so silently through the undergrowth, but I do. Perhaps that’s why you two-legged folk call me Strangefoot. The forest here still echoes with the memories of my ancestors, and I am grateful for their presence. They are the elephants who learnt to live here deep in the shadows of the ancient Outeniqua yellowwoods, hiding from hunters and wandering woodcutters in the beautiful Knysna forests, in this Garden of Eden. They learnt which forest plants to eat and their feet adapted to the moist forest floor, and so I continue their story. I do get scared on my own at times, when there is thunder and lightning, and I have no warm herd to huddle in, I lean against a logging machine for comfort, similar in size to my elephant relatives who no longer walk these paths. I should be a matriarch of a herd now, I’ve walked the earth for over 50 years, and should be guiding the younger elephants and showing them the ways of the forest, teaching them respect for their elders and ancestors, as my mother did for me. But I walk these paths alone, and I will until the forest takes me back and my bones are swept bare. Then there will be no other elephants who will come to pay their respects to my bones. Even my bones will be alone.

But I’m sure you know the feeling of being alone. I see fewer and fewer people spending time in nature, and I get this sense of the great disconnect as people spend more and more time alone with their devices, searching for connection that the machines can never give. And yet when you step into the forest and are still, so still, the loneliness seeps away and you feel our connection to everything, I’m sure you know the feeling, you feel part of something, the birdsong, the mushrooms popping up at your feet, the smell of the rich forest floor, the dappled light on your face, the gurgle of a fresh water stream. It’s in those moments that I realise that I’m not actually alone; the forest is my family, the whirr of birds’ wings, the click of crickets, the sighing of the trees remind me of where I belong and who I’m connected to. Have you ever felt these threads of deep and meaningful connection? Do you remember what that feels like?

So while I may never again connect with my elephant kin along the ancient migratory paths that lead over the mountains. And while I may never again be a pathmaker for all the other animals from tortoise to bushbuck to leopard, who may need to move and migrate as the weather changes and new areas need to be found for water and food. You can be. You can safeguard the ancient routes that connect the ocean to the mountains and beyond to the warm flatlands. You can be a Guardian of Eden and beyond, ensuring there is freedom of movement, that life can flow and pollinate and prey and disperse seeds and thrive. You can join the Eden to Addo community of nature restorers; visionary pathmakers who are leaving a legacy of life. So that no animal, no insect, no person, may ever be left alone as I am, and the beautiful, diverse tapestry of life may forever feel like the place we all belong.