INCARNATION
For 18 years Dian Fossey, the California-born zoologist, worked with gorillas on the continent of Africa. Working in the Virunga Mountains, located in the nation of Rwanda, she separated herself from civilization and those, who as poachers, sought to destroy the endangered gorillas. Leaving life on one part of this world, she moved halfway around the world to the region of the gorillas and literally lived among them. She first began in 1963 and four years later, by 1967, the gorillas had come to accept her. Looking at the gorillas as deserving of her love, she identified with them, named them, cradled their babies, cried with them when they mourned their dead. She once wrote: “These powerful but shy and gentle animals accepted and responded to my attentions when I acted like a gorilla. So I learned to scratch and groom and beat my chest. I imitated my subjects’ vocalizations (hoots, grunts and belches), munched the foliage they ate, kept low to the…
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