Recommended Reading

No One Loved Gorillas More: Dian Fossey Letters from the Mist

"No one loved gorillas more." The phrase is inscribed on Dian Fossey’s headstone, which Evelyn Gallardo and David Root, IPPL’s West Coast U.S. representatives, arranged to have placed over her grave at her research station in Rwanda. The phrase is also the title of a handsome book, published earlier this year, which brings together dozens of marvelous documentary photographs of the world-famous gorilla researcher’s life in the field. Dian spent 18 years living primarily among mountain gorillas in her remote camp, the Karisoke Research Center, within Rwanda’s Parc des Volcans.

The photographs show a dynamic and vigorous Dian: destroying poachers’ snares, getting supplies for her camp, transcribing her field notes, and observing the wild gorillas who became her life’s passion. There are also portraits of many gorillas familiar to readers of Fossey’s autobiographical Gorillas in the Mist, like Dian’s beloved silverbacks Digit and Uncle Bert. And the book captures many other aspects of Fossey’s world: scenic vistas of the mist-enshrouded mountains, slice-of-life pictures showing how Dian’s campsite evolved, and candid shots of the African workers who were integral to the camp’s long-term functioning.

The volume also includes transcripts of a large number of personal letters written by Dian-who, perhaps from her many years living in semi-isolation in the African bush, produced an abundant correspondence. Most of the letters in this book are to her parents and to Bob Campbell, the National Geographic photographer who shared several years of life with Dian in the mountains and with whom she had a romantic relationship for a time. The focus of the book is primarily on the period of her life from the mid 1960s to mid 1970s, when Bob Campbell was a frequent presence at Karisoke. There is also some correspondence to a few other special people, like her favorite Uncle Bert, trusted field-collaborator Ian Redmond, and her good friend Rosamond Carr.

Her feisty spirit comes through when she describes her ongoing struggles against poachers and other distractions of life in the bush, as she wrote to her parents in 1970:

"One reason I don’t get anything done at night lately is due to the elephants. They have been coming in droves in the full moon to play about the cabin. They are hard to ignore!" [page 99]

But the tender dedication she felt for the gorillas, and the excitement she experienced at the privilege of studying them, is evident every time she mentions her animals, as in this letter from 1971:

"I’ve had another fantastic contact with Group 4-I finally had the chance to put a mirror in front of one young adult’s face!!!! [This was Digit] He preened like a teenager getting ready for a prom-twisting his head from side to side with rather pursed lips at first and then lying down on his forearms to first smell the glass and then stare directly into it intently with a gentle, somewhat quizzical expression for 4 minutes. In all he looked at himself for 15 minutes and toward the end of that time reached behind it twice to feel for the animal that wasn’t there! Once it slipped slightly so he had to assume a new position to recapture his reflection. This was too comical to believe-twisting his body around on the ground with one hind leg or the other up in the air to keep his balance. This action attracted another animal who couldn’t understand what Digit (the young black back) was up to ... What a day." [pages 123-125]

By the end of the book, the reader is convinced that, indeed, no one loved the mountain gorillas of Rwanda more than she.