For as long as the elephants could remember — and that is a
long time — the path to the river snaked down the hillside through jungle so
dense a troop of pachyderms could simply vanish.
But about three decades ago, humans decided they, too, wanted
to get to the river, to gaze at the waterfalls that cascaded into the Khao Yai
National Park in central Thailand. The humans paved over part of the elephants’
trail with cement. They built toilets and snack kiosks.
he elephants, though, still needed to reach the river. They
hewed close to the old route, the one imprinted on generations of pachyderm
brains, but not so close that the day-trippers, with their picnics of sticky
rice and grilled pork, would see them.