The trackers go ahead at dawn. You follow, up through bamboo and stinging nettle and thick Rwandan mist, until a raised hand stops you: they are here. A family of mountain gorillas — one of only a thousand left on Earth — sprawled in a clearing, infants wrestling, a vast silverback presiding over it all a few metres away.
He looks at you. And there is a person behind the eyes.
You have one precious hour. What stays with people is not the size of him but the recognition — the astonishing, humbling closeness of another mind. Your permit and stay fund the rangers and communities that brought this species back from the brink; the awe here is inseparable from the good it does.