I Visited Jurassic Park. But These Were No Dinosaurs.
The fleeting joy and the enduring heartache of visiting the Elephant Nature Park.
We were driving for nearly an hour, making our way through hills covered in thick, sub-tropical forrest. All of a sudden the trees cleared, letting blinding beams of light in. My eyes were still adjusting to the intense, Thai sunshine when the valley below us revealed itself. There, on the mountainside stood a group of half a dozen elephants. It was the Elephant Nature Park — a sanctuary to orphaned and injured elephants set up 40 miles north of Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I’ve been waiting to get to the park for months. The last time I saw an elephant in real life was at a zoo, when I was kid. I must have been 6 years old and, frankly, it was far from “real life.” This time it was going to be different, though. The park shelters a herd of more than 50 animals, surrounded by their native habitat on a massive 250-acre property.
As we drove down the mountain slope more elephants showed up. And then more, and more, and even more! Before I realized they were everywhere. These giant, majestic creatures, gently wandering about in the morning sun. If you closed your eyes you wouldn’t even know they were there (with the exception of hearing the occasional trumpet, of course).
“This is insane,” I remember repeating in my head over and over again as we passed through the gate. It felt like a scene from Jurassic Park.
I jumped out of the van that carried us, excited to meet these giants. But soon the euphoria gave way to sadness. These were no prehistoric creatures wiped out from the face of the Earth in an untold cataclysm millions of years ago. And yet, it felt that way. As if these wondrous animals were no longer part of this world; as if they were mere artifacts of the past.
I walked up to the railing on the visitors’ deck. One of the elderly females showed up. She noticed us arrive and must have figured out it’d be feeding time soon. “Hello dear” I said, handing her a ripe melon from the crate nearby. “I’m feeding an elephant, I’m feeding an elephant!” was all I could think of at the time. But despite the joy I couldn’t escape the gloomy feeling from moments earlier.
That’s not the kind of Jurassic Park I wanted to see.
