I learned to ride bareback on the horse of a woman who said the following: "During my divorce, my horse saved my life."

She didn't mean literally, of course.  Her horse didn't carry her from a burning building or push her out of the way of a speeding car.  No.  The depth is more indefinite than that.  Your feet do not touch bottom and you cannot see the other end.  We know this greatness in the reverence of quiet moments or the breath exchanged between beings.  This is the gift of the animals.

In times of high emotions, non-human animals become our whisperers.  They don't even try, in my opinion - they just are.  In times of high emotions, if you are so fortunate to be around non-human animals, you might find that being close to them is all you need.  I do not care to romanticize them; they have their brutal sides.  What they offer is too sublime to fit into any one category.  Yes, it is love.  Yes, it is friendship.  Yes, you become two ships passing in the night.  It is their simple presence that quiets the mind and expands the heart.

No.  They don't try to fix anything or offer any words of wisdom or even take away your sadnesses, but neither do they judge.  They bear witness - with their eyes, and their beating hearts.  And if we may emerge tattered and scarred from the thickest jungles of our minds for just a moment - just a millisecond - then we know what they show us is this: ever-present, vibrating Life.  The gift from Source, or whatever name you have for It.  And that is a road map straight to the center of our own beings.  Because we are alive, too.

This is why we need them.  In this simplicity, we remember that majesty is present inside as well as out.  In our neurons, in the connections of our cells.  In our hearts.  So we can breathe deeply in the Darkness, and marvel in ecstasy at the Light.   We need them not because of their love for us... On the contrary, that is something we must earn.  No - we need them because of our love for them.  Because learning to love so unabashedly is the greatest wealth in the world.

*** All photos in the series taken at Parque das Aves Rehabilitation Facility, except for the first and the last, taken at the breathtaking Iguazu Falls