When we take ourselves out of our every day lives, we discover miracles we couldn't otherwise have imagined.
We stood in the clearing in Kirindy Mitea National Park in southwestern Madagascar and waited. Then down from the trees, a troop of brown lemurs appeared. We watched them wander about, going about their lives, and then it happened.
This tiny baby head appeared from its mother's fur. And I lowered by head and cried, never imagining I would see such a wonder as this.
I didn't want the moment to end. I wished to suspend time and simply live in this lemur-world, where my eyes and these little blue eyes could meet forever.
But later, we slowly moved to the edge of the clearing, and took turns holding out a land snail shell filled with water. We just squatted there, waiting. And in this hot, dry forest, one by one, the brown lemurs slipped toward us, gently but firmly took our fingers, and drank.
To be held by a wild lemur, fingers to finger, to connect with such intimacy to a world so unlike our own, creates a bond, heart to heart, and all else falls away.