I want you to picture the densest, most beautiful forest that you can. The floor of the forest is very dense, covered with vines. The shades of green are limitless. Big mountains, steep sides, giant fig trees. The afternoon rolls in, rain dumps down, soil gets rejuvenated, just organic matter making its way back through fungi, back into the trees. Light streams through in this misty area. You're part of something that's so much greater than you and ancient, just overpoweringly beautiful. And all of this undergrowth that you're walking through is food. Being an expedition leader, one of my major roles is really trying to make people feel comfortable in surroundings they're not used to. You're going to a place you've never been to before. And as soon as you get into that forest, you're immersed. You'll be stepping over logs, walking over streams, stepping on rocks. You're having to cut your way through with the machete in order to get from one place to another. Windy's not called the impenetrable forest for nothing. The trackers go, woo hoo. And then you meet up with them and the guide says, okay, it's time. And you walk in. And within a couple of minutes, you suddenly get to this point where one of the trackers starts to move some branches out the way. And there's this black, flurry gorilla behind it, looking up at you, as if you were just part of the scenery. Zero impact. And the guides will move you around from place to place, getting you in a spot where you can just sit and be part of it, take photos of it, just look into their eyes. One of the biggest myths is that you're not allowed to look in a gorilla's eyes because you are. It's the place where you're gonna see their soul, man. You're as far away as you can be, sometimes that's not more than a few feet. Sometimes they wanna walk right past you. Walk inches past you, and you're just in it. This this sense of holy crap, I'm on foot with a gorilla. And so you get drawn into this family. I can remember probably at eight or nine years old standing at a fence which where these very strong iron fences to keep elephants and and rhino and buffalo from moving through and saying, one day, when I'm big, I wanna be a game ranger. And that's a guide in South African terms. I don't know what it is, but I've always been drawn to the stillness of nature, the beauty of it, and just the mystique. By the age of sort of eleven, twelve, they thought it long past. It wasn't seen as a great job or something with a future. You know, now you're thinking about being a doctor or engineer or something my parents wanted. My dad was a very personable person, great sense of humor, everyone loved him. But he was also disciplinarian. Face me, Richie. Oh, look at this one. Yeah. German face me. I made sure that everything stayed in an order, and whilst there was discipline, there was an abundance of love. I I feet, but she had this walk on her and I can still hear the walk. Walked so fast. She was very work ethic focused and pushed that on us a lot. We were studying for a test. It's like, oh, you finished studying. Bring me your book. And then she would test us. If we didn't get a hundred percent, write what she was saying. It's back to the room, back to study. And failure was not an option. But again, full of love. Absolute, unconditional, unconditional love. I always wanted to please them. That very much ruled my life. I don't think I resented that. I resented my father's push of his own agenda on me. His biggest wish for me was a degree because he felt like that would give me the stepping stone that I needed to be more than he had become and to give me the best opportunity in life. I knew it was from a loving place. There's no but the two of us started really butting heads at this stage. And our relationship sort of hit this really strained point. And during that year, the university had said, our power utility company is looking to give bursaries. A scholarship in South Africa, we call it a bursary. I filled in this form and I sent it off. I never thought about it again. And a couple of weeks later, they phoned back and they're like, congratulations, Richard. You got the bursary. My father melted with pride. And to see his face being with that pride was a huge, huge thing for me. And it was deep, it was a big movement, it moved us past the tension that had happened before because he could suddenly see I had an out and a job, and all of it seemed paved. And then life changed. A month later, we were gonna go to Thailand on holiday. I said I'd stay with my brother. They canceled my plane ticket, and they went. That morning when the phone rang, and it was a very, very close family friend, And I answered it and she's like, have you seen the news? Why would I see the news? Six AM. It's like there's been a massive tsunami in Thailand. In Thailand, paradise beaches turned to visions of hell. Nothing could resist the massive surge of water. Tens of millions of tons of water, unthinkably powerful, are driven onto shores across the Indian Ocean. Right at that moment, I knew I knew they were gone. There was this real calm that had set in, and there was nothing I could do. Four years down the line, I'm unhappy, And drugs and alcohol did their part in moving the goalposts and dropping me so deep into a depression that I didn't know how I was gonna get out. And what I'd started doing was on Sunday mornings, waking up at four AM, climbing into my car, and driving all the way to Kwam Rutan, and going on game drive, and starting to take photos. It was the only place that I felt the space to be me, and I was like, bugger it. I'm going to do this. I'm gonna become a guide. And I worked through this, all this filth inside me. Nature just mocked up. I felt alive again for the first time in many, many years. And fifteen years down the line, I'm sitting as a career guide, working for the most amazing company, meeting the most incredible people, seeing nature's unadulterated beauty, and I thank God for every little connection that pushed me along the way. My father was so proud of me for that bursary. If they hadn't have passed away in the tsunami, I wouldn't be the person I am today. I would never have found nature. And when we talk about a silver lining, I think I had a gray lining. It was a momentary blip of gray dark clouds that changed the way I thought, but without that darkness, I couldn't find the light on the other end. And if my father had been around, I think about it often, and he's he would be so proud of what I've become. And both of them, I can just see them hugging me and loving me for finding a root and finding my passion. I would give anything just for another hug. But I don't have that, and all I can do is give my kids the hugs that I would have got. I had a moment with a gorilla. She'd had a very young baby, and she let me get into a space that I could bring the guests into. And she showed off her baby, and that was emotional for me. Gorillas are our cousins. They are so closely related to us. They are highly highly intelligent creatures. You just sit there and look at these in these beautiful brown eyes of theirs, and you can see this all, just like you can when you look into the eyes of a person. Each one's got a different personality. Each one behaves differently. They live in these beautiful family groups run by a silverback. Do you see this the family dynamic exactly like you would see at a barbecue on a Saturday with the whole family around? That time where I saw the gorilla baby and she was so close and four days old, it makes me think of the family unit, how my role is a silverback. And it's my goal for the rest of my life to share what I get to do on a daily basis with them and my wife, with the entire family, because I get to see amazing spaces all the time. If I could teach my kids anything, it's that they can do whatever they want with the right purpose. If they find their purpose, they will be able to change lives, including their own.
