West With Giraffes

by Lynda Rutledge

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. —Anatole France, Nobel Laureate, 1921

“Animals are complete all on their own, living by voices we don’t get to hear, having a knowing far beyond our paltry ken.

It’s a strange thing how you can spend years with some folks and never know them, yet, with others, you only need a handful of days to know them far beyond years.

In a long life, there is a singular moment when you know you’ve made more memories than any new ones you’ll ever make. That’s the moment your truest stories—the ones that made you the you that you became—are ever more in the front of your mind, as you begin to reach back for the you that you deemed best.