A mother in the wild is a wondrous thing. I watch, entranced, as a lioness strides lithe and powerful across a golden-grassed plain in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Her tiny, tawny cubs weave alongside her, tumbling and bumbling along, all of them backlit by the soft sunshine. They settle by a small waterhole, little ones amusing themselves, mother on constant alert – ears pricking at distant roars between what, I swear, are sighs of exasperation as the cubs run amok. In this moment of familiarity and poignant wonder, the rest of the frenetic, too-much world feels very, very far away.