Black Lion

Wilderness guide Sicelo Mbatha shares lessons learnt from a lifetime’s intimate association with Africa’s wildest nature. Black Lion begins in rural South Africa where a deeply traumatic childhood experience – he witnessed his cousin being dragged away by a crocodile – should have turned Sicelo against the surrounding wilderness.

Instead, he was irresistibly drawn to it. As a volunteer at Imfolozi Nature Reserve, close encounters with buffalo, lion, elephant and other animals taught him to ‘see’ with his heart and thus began a spiritual awakening. Drawing from his Zulu culture and his own yearning to better understand human’s relationship to nature, Sicelo has forged a new path, disrupting the conventional approach to nature with an immersive, respectful and transformative way of being in the wilderness.

Both memoir and philosophical reflection, Black Lion - co-written with environmentalist Bridget Pitt - is his brilliant and profound account of life as a wilderness spiritual guide. As humanity hurtles into the anthropogenic 21st century, Black Lion is an urgent reminder of just how much we need wilderness for our emotional and spiritual survival.

A brave account of a natural disaster, and of achieving reconciliation with the predatoriness of life.’ Richard Mabey on Sicelo Mbatha's essay, Letting Go, commended for the Irish Moth Nature Writing Prize.