Trust
I found these beloved photographs on Flickr, and the sweetest response:
Oh, Lori — they are wonderful. It’s a truly touching experience to have a wild animal trust you to the extent that these birds do. Heart warming, eh? I think so.
What you have here is the result of all the hard work and love you’ve put into your ‘work’ over these past years. You fully deserve it and when a living thing (human, or, otherwise) lets you into their life, it touches us on an emotional and spiritual level that no materialist item just could ever do.
Animals may not ‘remember’ us in the same way that we do, but when they see us, they will remember how we made them feel… and that’s the special gift, for both you and the swans.
When you look at that those photographs in years to come, it will reactivate all the visual memories and emotional feelings that will reside in you forever. And those swans — every time they see you, they will reactivate the positive feelings that give them comfort and excitement, comfort and excitement in a world they live in that is fraught with danger and death at every corner. But for a few moments at least, when they see you…. it’s all forgotten.
Mark Nicolaides, author of “Swan Life”
