I don’t think a day goes by at the sanctuary right now without significant change of some sort. Learning behaviors and personalities from new chimpanzee friends, seeing new behaviors with long-time chimpanzee friends, new areas for chimpanzees and humans to access and former ones temporarily closed off, new procedures and protocols, new ideas, new volunteers and interns for autumn, scheduling changes, and even, well, things like one minute someone has their ear and the next, they don’t. Change, expected and unexpected, is always occurring, just on a more obvious level these days. And now, on this last official day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, we seem to have moved straight ahead into autumn. (Though in my book, I’d be thrilled with nine months of autumn).
I think as humans, or at least as this human, we often expect, or at least prefer some things to remain the same, predictable. But even though we celebrate things such as the transitions of one season into the next, if we’ve been paying any attention at all we’ve seen all the tiny every day things that lead us ahead into the next phase of life. With breaths of fresh air, new inspiration, new beauty to appreciate, new beings to love.
The chimpanzees last day of summer was a cool, rainy one here. It worked out well enough as they were all busy supervising the many humans working hard to expand their outdoor habitats which will be bringing new experiences to them in the days to come. Along with hopeful new friends and family when we soon begin introductions. Always changing, always growing.
The evening air is filled with the slowing song of crickets and frogs while the dark of night is increasingly alive with geese calling as they pass overhead on their way south. The chimps are all tucked into their blanket nests for the night, I suspect milling over their own thoughts and anticipation of change. May your hearts be as full from the beauty and bounty of summer as you’ve helped the chimpanzees’ to be, as you listen to the last sighs of summer rustle the changing leaves of autumn.
I had these photos of beautiful Foxie saved to share with you, which just happen to be pre-ear biting incident. She’s still just as beautiful. 🙂
