the lion's roar........................

     Then, a beat of deep stillness followed by a lion roaring back.
     The sound of the lion's roar is the threshold telling me I have stepped from one world to another.  After so many nights abroad filled with artificial light and the hum of appliances, there is no truer sound of being home.  The timbre of the call, the way it rolls through the cold night air to find me.  Its powerful vibrations shudder the door on its hinges.  My heart instinctively skips with excitement.
     The renowned writer of the African wilderness Laurens van der Post said of the lion's roar that "it is to silence what the shooting star is to the night sky."

-Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life