Preparations - A Spiritual Journey

Excerpted from
Reason for Hope; A Spiritual Journey
By Jane Goodall, Ph.D., Phillip Berman

When I was twelve years old my parents divorced. Vanne, Judy, and I simply went on living at the Birches. Since I had seen my lather only a few times during the long war years, and then just for a couple of days at a time when he returned on leave, nothing really seemed to change. By then, after all, the Birches had been my home for seven years.

I was working hard at school, for I enjoyed learning-at least, learning about the subjects that interested me such as the English language, English literature, history, Scripture, and biology. And I went on reading out of school as well. Among the hundreds of volumes at the Birches were many philosophy books that had belonged to my grandfather. I was fascinated by these ancient tomes, many of which were printed in a lovely old Gothic typeface. As well as reading I loved writing stories, and I also wrote a lot of poetry, mostly about nature and the joy of being alive. I lived for the weekends and the school holidays because then, with Rusty, I could be outside, roaming the cliffs that rose from the seashore, with their sandy, pine-covered slopes. In the late spring they were bright yellow with gorse bushes in bloom, and in the summer, a blaze of mauve and crimson rhododendrons. There were squirrels and all manner of birds and insects. And the freedom of it!

I shall never forget the thrill when, one day in early spring, I saw a weasel hunting mice in the heather on the cliffs above the sea. Or the hot summer evening when I watched a hedgehog, with much grunting and snuffling, courting his prickly mate. One magical afternoon in late autumn, I came upon a squirrel gathering and burying beechnuts. They would provide her with food when she periodically woke from her winter sleep. At least, that was the intention. But a jay, perched above her, flew down after each careful burial and robbed the cache. The sequence was repeated seven times; twice the squirrel actually watched the theft, then continued her profitless labor with unabated zeal. Once I glimpsed the russet coat of a fox, found his tracks in the January snow, saw how he had chased, and missed, a rabbit.

Although I loved being on my own with Rusty, I was by no means antisocial and sometimes I went out with a few girlfriends-coed schools were rare in those days, and mine was for girls only. I don't remember the exact games we played, but they all involved being outside on the cliffs or the beach. We loved to dare each other to perform somewhat dangerous acts, such as scrambling along a sandy slope above a steep drop. Once this almost resulted in tragedy. One girl started to slip, causing a little avalanche of sand to go tumbling down the cliff. She froze. She stopped sliding down but was unable to move in any direction for what seemed hours until, somehow, we talked her into taking the next step. We were all chastened by that experience and became a little less fool-hardy. Although I could not know it at the time, all of this was, of course, perfect training for Gombe.

Most Saturdays I went to a riding school in the country owned by the remarkable Selina Bush, known as Bushel. Vanne could not afford to pay for me to ride every week so I used to clean the saddles and bridles, and muck out, and help on the farm. I worked so hard and so enthusiastically that I was often rewarded with a free ride. Most of Bushel's animals were small, hardy New Forest ponies who had been taken, as foals, from the herds that ran wild in the nearby forest. On them I gradually learned the art of horsemanship. One day, to my enormous delight, I was allowed to ride a show pony. Sometimes I went in for jumping competitions at local gymkhanas. And then I was offered the chance of going hunting. Fox hunting. How exciting! It meant that I would ride with the huntsmen in their "pink" coats, which in fact are red as red can be. There would be huge hedges and fences to jump; there would be the sound of the hunting horn. Most important, Bushel clearly believed my riding was good enough for such a challenge. I determined that I would not let her down.

I didn't think about the fox. And then, after three hours of hard riding, I saw him, bedraggled and exhausted, just before the hounds seized and tore him up. All the excitement was gone in that moment. How could I for even one moment have wanted to be part of this murderous and horrible event with a whole lot of grown-up people riding on horses, following in cars and on bicycles, while a great pack of baying dogs chased after one poor little fox? I remember lying awake that night thinking of the fox I had seen on the cliff, and of the other fox-the pathetic victim of the hunt. Certainly my cliff fox had been hunting too, but only because he needed food. Not for sport.

I have wondered a lot about that hunt. The very fact that I, an animal lover, had wanted to take part seems extraordinary now. What if I hadn't seen the fox at all? Would I have wanted to go again? What if we had lived in the country, and had horses of our own, and I had been expected to go hunting from an early age? Would I have grown up accepting that this was the thing to do? Would I have hunted foxes again and again, and watched dispassionately their suffering, "all pity choked by custom of fell deed"? Is this how it happens? We do what our friends do in order to be one of the group, to be accepted? Of course there are always some strong-minded individuals who have the courage of their convictions, who stand out against the group's accepted norms of behavior.