Katelyn

Everyone! It’s August! A wonder and a mind-bender, isn’t it? I often think our human constructs of time actually make it pass more quickly for us. But perhaps it just gives us all the more reason to celebrate every good thing.

For all of you celebrating August birthdays or special-days, we hope you know we’re celebrating along with you! In a never-ending variety of ways, you make all that we cherish here possible and we’re so thankful to you for being with us. And with that in mind, you have some particularly magical birthday twins this month.

Foxie is going to be 47 on August 8th! Fox, like everyone in her group really, seems to have access to some everlasting elixir of if not exactly youth, the magical spirit and abandon that are often born of it. For that, we are endlessly grateful.

I’ve been immensely fortunate to have known Foxie and her family a long time now and only in the last few years as I look through old photos, or certain slants of light, I find my gaze resting momentarily on the glimpses of time and the grace of fifteen years of sanctuary playing out in her silvering highlights and her sometimes more thoughtfully planned (but still done!) back-flips, pirouettes and head-stands. I can fully relate to these mirrored changes, well, minus the back-flips and head-stands. But always, our hearts are held in wonder of her effervescent, ineffable self. What an unfathomable gift we all have in our lives intertwining with hers and each of the chimpanzees.

On August 18th, it will be the 4th anniversary of Mave, Willy B and Honey B arriving home with us and it’s been another year full to the brim for each of them.

This is a year in which Mave has endearingly morphed into “Mora”, having found her person in Dora. None of us have seen her as happy and content since being integrated with Dora’s group, which naturally makes our hearts sing for hers.

Willy B bravely continues to find his footing both as one of the Big Guys (here with Cy and Terry) in his now group of nine, as well as in his groups’ outdoor habitat, the Bray. While he still often chooses the bumpier path along his way, it takes no less courage and we’re proud of him.

And Honey B is living her Honey B life just as she sees fit, every second of every day. Which, of course, is what sanctuary life is all about. Sometimes holding hands with her particularly patient half-sister, Rayne (look at those sisterly profiles), sometimes wrapped in a whirling ball of arms and legs and teeth and yelling with her half-sister, Rayne (or anyone else she feels a strong need to have words with), the unnerving beauty of which is Honey B courageously navigating her life as her wonderfully unique self.

And we will celebrate Missy turning 48 on August 23rd! Missy, who climbed the first tree of her life this past year. And she made it a big one! Who, along with Foxie, had her family of the last 15 years plus profoundly changed with the loss of Jody, and whose spirit and tiny, but mighty runner’s feet continue to follow the north star of her resilient heart.

I’ve said it for the last, oh, thirteen or so years of knowing her and I’ll say it for all my years forward, I wish that for just five minutes I could feel what it’s like to be Missy, moving through life with all that wild strength and grace. I often think that because Missy avoids the paparazzi and chooses to walk through life with her chimp people much more often than her human people, it might go unnoticed to those who aren’t able to see her so frequently just how very special she is. But trust me, she’s a gem.

I saw Enrichment Coordinator, Chad, working on ideas for all things Shortcake (as in Strawberry) and tomato to add to our Amazon Wishlist for Foxie and Missy’s celebrations, so if you’re interested and able to contribute, keep an eye out there and all our thanks in advance!

On that note, I’d like to add that I was training one of our new volunteers the other day and they asked if we had an Amazon Wishlist. It was an amazing thing to stop and do a 360 in the human areas pointing out that most everything we were seeing had been donated by our amazing supporters. You’ll never know how much that means to us and the chimpanzees. Thank you!!

As always, we have so much to celebrate because of you all. I ran across a quote the other day that made me think of this and specifically of the chimpanzees, of us all really. I don’t often like to quote people because, well, their words are their own and it’s sticky territory, but nevertheless, so much can happen in the sharing:

“Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful, it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living a heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.” – LR Knost