An Elephant Taking a Mud Bath - Photographs and Tales from the Kruger Part 2

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If there is ever a story to write about something moral and metaphorical, it must be the elephant taking a mud path. Spraying your body with mud (generally seen as something filthy) to keep you clean, cool, and happy must be the ultimate metaphor to live. Can we not take this piece of information and make something beautiful from it?

In the dirt we can find salvation; in the dirt, we can find cleanliness.

Or something like that!

Either way, as we continued our journey in the Kruger National Park, after witnessing the crocodile and vultures eating a carcass, we stumbled upon an elephant taking a mud bath. It was a lone elephant, and it really looked like it was having a great time. Even though it was probably doing this out of instinct, it looked like it enjoyed the cooling effect, and possibly the cleansing effect as well.

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Lucky for me, I had my zoom lens ready. The video above is taken from the side of the road, but my zoom lens allowed me to look a bit closer, to see the almost joy like expressions in the elephants face and demeanour.

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As we drove away, I could not stop thinking about the metaphor of washing yourself with that which the world sees as dirt. How powerful is it to cleanse ourselves with the dirt of the earth? Dirt understood here not in the moral sense of something dirty, merely the perceived smudging effect of those around us. For is it not when we take what is thrown to the ground by other and make it whole again that potential is realised? These ideas circled around in my head as we drove away from the elephant that probably still continued bathing in the mud.

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And so we find ourselves in the new year, in 2026, with a metaphor to carry us through: take what was thrown away and turn it into gold. Take what the world sees as dirty and cleanse ourselves with it. Even though we will probably attract some onlookers that will think we have lost our minds, we will plant the seed for change.

The elephant cleanses itself with dirt, so too can we clean ourselves for this new year with what we think has no worth.

Maybe this is also just intelectual fluff.

Either way, happy photographing and keep well!

All of the musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by what I think was a beautiful and metaphorical moment. The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Tamron 300mm zoom lens.