The Elephant's Song

The spirit of Elephant met me in my dreams last night. She beckoned me to join her in an arid plain that was scattered with sparse, spiky shrubs. The skin that hung from  the elephant’s bones looked almost as old as the earth itself. It draped itself into ridges and crevasses as though it were a landscape carved from the wind and the sun and once flowing riverbeds. 

The elephant’s bright eyes, elegantly framed by dark, thick lashes, peered out at me from the rich, storied landscape of her skin. 

“Many of us are fading from the earth,” the elephant told me. As she spoke, I had an image of elephants retreating from our world into a misty landscape beyond my reach. Her words put me in mind of the stories of Avalon, or of underground fairy worlds that remain connected to the earth, but lie just out of reach. It was as though she was telling me that the elephant spirit is not dying. She will not go extinct in the way we think. Instead, she is withdrawing into more hospitable lands and worlds that lie beyond our knowing. 

The elephant stomped her enormous feet to rid herself of flies. Small plumes of dust rose into the air under her movement. She then invited me to listen as she placed her foot back onto the fine dirt. She showed me how her feet take in the vibrations of the earth from near and far. They absorb the trill of birds and the thrum of lions in the distance. 

She showed me that through her feet, she can listen to the sun and the wind, and the gentle hum of the plants. She drew my attention to a plant with thick, ribbon-like leaves that rolled across the desert sands. A Welwitschia mirabilis I later learned. The elephant lent me her feet and her ears so I could hear the plant’s vibrations, which sounded like the gentle, steady breath of ocean waves. 

The elephant showed me how the vibrations that reach her feet travel up through her bones. They spread throughout her body and through all her centers of cognition. The elephant showed me how she delights in the never-ending symphony of life, of which she is a vital part. 

In my dream, the elephant began to walk through a valley scattered with sun-bleached bones. A soft, haunting melody greeted my ears as the wind played through the hollowed-out pieces of bone. 

These are my kin, the elephant told me, my ancestors. Our bones, she says, are sacred gifts from the earth. They give us form, she says. They are the instruments that transmit the symphony of life to our ears. 

She tells me that the bones carry the stories, the songs, of those who once walked the earth. We are record keepers she says, and I think of the saying that an elephant never forgets. 

She tells me that the elephants gather the bones of their loved ones and bury them under dirt and fallen leaves. We cover them over, the elephant says, in order to send the earth’s sacred gift back to her care. 

But now, she continues, they are scattered and laid bare for all to see. I think of poachers and metal excavators who interrupt the ancient rites that elephants practice. Those who lay the bones bare to be bleached by the sun and cradled by the moon. To become playthings of the wind. Many of us, the elephant tells me, have decided to follow the whistle of the wind to the lands beyond. I think again of Avalon and worlds of knowledge that lie beyond our reach. 

Before I know what is happening, I find myself in a creaky old elevator, jolting up through the metal skeleton of a building to a small apartment perched high above the surface of the earth. I peered into the worn, cozy apartment to find a grandmother tending to her family. Just as I was wondering why I was there, I found the elephant again, this time crammed almost comically into a small closet. All her memories, all the records of the earth that were kept and tended by her kin were crammed, like her, into an impossible space. Despite her size, she sat overlooked. Just like the proverbial elephant in the room often is she said, with a soft laugh in her voice. 

I smiled to myself at her gentle sense of humor before she bid me once again to listen. The song of the desert had turned into the grind and click of the metal bones of the building. The songs of the birds and the whisper of water flowing far beneath the surface turned to the creak of footsteps on hardwood floor and murmuring voices. The sounds floated around me briefly before fading into the empty landscape that lay beyond the window. It was as though the building itself was a ghost, perched atop a land that had long forgotten itself. 

I woke with a jolt to the softness of my cat’s paws gently kneading my skin. I listened for the sound of my dog’s soothing snores. The song of the desert and the whistle of metallic bones receded as my ears met the familiar sounds of birds, cars, and an airplane far overhead. Before I rose, I felt the warning of the land that forgot itself.  I heard the gentle voice of the elephant, asking me to listen to the song of my earth, to be the song of my earth, and to remember, from time to time, the song of her ancestors.