Within Breathing Distance
Enter Here
There is a moment in the field when the world falls away.
What is left is both intimate and vast.
The sound of breathing.
The slow weight of an animal shifting its body.
The sudden crack of bone.
A current of air moving between us.
Light catching the edge of fur like a held breath. And then, sometimes, a pair of eyes finds mine, and for a few suspended seconds there is nothing else. Just complete presence, two worlds connected.
People ask if I was afraid. They ask how close I stood. I understand the wonder behind the questions, but it is never the distance I remember.
It is how it felt.
The curiosity of a wolf's gaze, tempting and sensitive looking deeply at me. The startling tenderness in the face of a spirit bear, eyes that melt your core. The raw, unspoken power of a creature who could change everything in a heartbeat, and chooses, for now, to let me stay.
There is a humility in this that no one can teach. To stand in another being's world and know I am only the visitor. Nothing is promised. Nothing is mine. I can only pay attention, honour the space I have been given, and try to carry something of it home.
The photograph is what remains visible.
But what stays with me lives beyond the frame, in the breath, the silence, the fragile thread of trust drawn taut between two beings who have no need of words.
I have spent my whole life searching for where I belong. And each time I meet a souls eyes, I find another piece of this entwined world and carry it with me. I become more awake. More connected to this place we all call home. Less a witness, more a part of it.
Still, the question follows me out of the forests and glaciers, quieter each time, and closer.
Where do I fit in this great, breathing world?
Perhaps the answer was never a place. Perhaps it is this: to be undone again and again, within breathing distance, and to wake a little more each time.
Becoming.
Nikki Baxendale