15 Minutes of Magic - Sean Vincent

“Oh, no way John, no way”, whispered my friend Alex from across the path. His disbelief was rightly placed, as neither of us had believed we would ever even get close to one of these beautiful, wild creatures. But here I was, two or three feet away, and praying for dear life. I had been camped on a rock for the past few hours, mostly taking film of birds, lizards, and other things like that while waiting to catch footage of the native wild silverback gorillas. Then, in what seemed to me like an instant, the father gorilla came lumbering down the path toward me, his juvenile children in tow. As I sat there, as still as a tree, the first thing I felt was fear. With his powerful looking tree trunk arms, and his hulking physique, he could kill me in less than a second if he wanted to. But he didn’t, and I didn’t think he was going to. The calm atmosphere he seemed to exude calmed me down slightly, that is, until he walked right next to me and sat down directly behind me. The calmness that had been created by his presence was shattered the moment he left my field of view. This new fear was perhaps even stronger than the last. An old saying I had once heard popped into mind, going something like “The fear you know isn’t as bad as the fear you don’t”. This fear of the unknown kept me in petrified silence and stillness for what seemed like eons. However, this feeling too, was swatted away, as fast as it took for the gorilla to reach out its hand and pluck a small insect that had nestled itself in my hair. Hat moment brought with it the greatest sense of relief I’ve ever felt, along with disbelief, admiration, and to top it all, elation at still being alive. As the gorilla picked out another insect, I shot my friend Alex a look as if to say: “You’d better be filming all this”. He nodded slowly back at me, the largest grin I’ve ever seen stretching across his face. As the gorilla picked the last insect out of my hair, he stood up slowly, supporting himself on his knuckles. He let out a short grunting noise, which made me jump, and was a signal to his children to finish up and leave as well. As he left with his children in a neat little line, I breathed the largest sigh of relief I’ve ever done. The feeling that followed was similar to the satisfaction of finishing a large and complicated presentation successfully, but multiplied thousands of times. The gorillas having left, I noticed for the first time that my heart had been pounding in my chest the whole time, and that I was covered in sweat. When they were out of eye and earshot, I tiptoed over to my cameraman, Alex, and whispered, “Did you just see that?” “See what?” whispered Alex back jokingly. “Of course I saw, and it’s all on film too!” said Alex, now slightly louder and more excited-sounding. “I could kiss you right now for what we just captured!” he continued. We continued talking in hush tones for the next half-hour, mostly about our amazement at the events that had just unfolded. Then, very abruptly, he asked quite a serious question. “What was it like?” he asked. “It was like…” I said, unsure of the right words to describe it. After a brief pause, I continued: “it was like…magic I guess”. “What do you mean?” asked Alex with a puzzled look on his face. “It was like, you know…” I began slowly, “how you know it can’t be real, but you can’t deny that it’s happening”. “Every sense in your body is telling you that it’s there, but you still can’t believe that it is”, I elaborated. “Anyway”, I said, changing the subject abruptly, “we should probably show this film to someone fast”. “Agreed”, he said, nodding his head lightly. Someone once said that a person is most easily changed when they are under great stress, and I couldn’t agree more. After that day, I looked at every rock, tree, bird, insect and plant in a whole new way, as if someone had opened my eyes to an entire world that I had been missing before. Neither of us have forgotten that day, and we’ve never let go of the magic that silverback gorilla created for us.