Searching for the ghost elephants was a dim descent. The world had forgotten us. The weeks passed by as we explored the last place left, the “Land at the end of the Earth”. The sleep-walking tempo of the elephants became our own as we walked, and walked, and walked. Slowly up and down, around and across, the sandy, forested ridges between rivers, we walked. As the truth became an elephant walking quietly in the darkness, unseen, I felt the unmistakeable loneliness of knowing that what you want to believe did, in fact, happen. Time was present, but was irrelevant. Nothing seemed real anymore. Lost in unending forest, every now and then, we saw elephant tracks, broken branches, and muddy rubbings on trees; signs. We existed to find dung from ghost elephants that weren’t there. They knew us and wondered why we didn’t. Perhaps there was no good reason for us to be there? All I could see were shadows threatening to take living form when I wasn’t looking. To us, this is what passed for life in this faraway, forgotten place. Why? How did it come to this? The ghost elephants made us follow them without seeing them to show us. We found ourselves living in an earlier time, in a world before us, with them. We stayed with local bushmeat hunters, living no different than they had a century ago. They said they could show us the ghosts. They said they knew how to find them. They said the elephants were listening, that we shouldn’t talk about where we’re going each day, if we really wanted to see them. They said the best way to see the ghost elephants was to forget about them. One day, towards the end, I lay down under an old tree and fell asleep. Slower and slower, deeper and deeper, lower and lower; the bark of the powerful roots curling around me became an elephant’s skin as I ran my fingers over it. The ghost elephant was gone when I lifted my head to look for a vanishing sun. They had broken me. I wished no one, even me, knew about them. I wanted to believe they could always be there; ghosts walking silently in the moonlight far away from anywhere. I’ll never forget those first months searching for the ghost elephants. Even now, I can feel them. Screengrab: @vos_films