the endless plain

i take a swig from my can of kilimanjaro lager and eat the last of the salted cashews. the beer’s color is strikingly reminiscent of urine and tastes, like so many of its commercial american counterparts, like donkey piss. i had to try it though; it’s the national beer of tanzania.

out the left window of the ATR-42, the real kilimanjaro slides into view in all her glory.


in swahili they call her “uhuru,” or freedom peak. she towers above the cloud deck, turning salmon-pink in the fading alpenglow. the disappearing snows of kilimanjaro, immortalized by hemingway, would be barely recognized by the absinthe-swilling genius. global warming is a bitch.

silently i lift my beer in salute to the impressive, looming stature and fantasize about a climbing trip later. although uhuru doesn’t require any technical mountaineering skills, she doesn’t get the respect she deserves: people coming from all over with the irreverent, conquerer's mentality; defining a “successful climb” as standing on the top. they are willing to pay thousands of dollars for guides, cooks, porters, waiters, ass-wipers....anything that guarantees them the best chance of a summit.

what a disgrace to the sport. the mountain gods deserve respect. these people shouldn’t be here. who cares if you learn anything about yourself on the way?

i remember an engraved saying i saw at the beginning of the route up switzerland's matterhorn:

“somewhere up there, between the base and the summit, lies the reason that we climb.” i drain the can.


******


i am in tanzania for a much needed r&r. later tonight, i will meet up with my great buddy random, a fellow real-world dropout. it's been a year since i've seen him, although we were inseparable in our time flying fedex together in the caribbean. the world on time.


random and i love the same basic things in life: skiing and flying airplanes, cold beers and hot women, climbing mountains and growing beards.

after a teary, heartfelt reunion at the hostel, we proceed to the rooftop bar to down a few south african stouts and catch up on new flying jobs, ladies, upcoming adventures.

the next day we meet king, our driver; and moshi, our cook, and head out. departing arusha to the west: driving through dried-up wasteland.

we pick up my little sister, who has spent the summer volunteering at an orphanage in the rift valley. as soon as i see her, i sense something different. there has been a change, something i can’t quite define or capture. her already-big heart has grown enormous among these children.

after goodbyes all the way down the red rutted road, we are off.


climbing into the cool, crowded green jungle; descending onto the dry, dusty plains that the local maasai tribes call siringit.

serengeti. the endless plain.


i soon see why. no matter how many hours we drive, the horizon is filled with nothing but more dry savannah grasses, the occasional lone acacia tree, and a few isolated kopjes, or granite outcroppings, that seem out of place. how these rocks got out here in the middle of such a broad, flat expanse is something geologists will make up fairy tales about.

we speed down the corrugated washboard road, lifting a rooster tail of floury brown dust hundreds of feet into the air behind us. it just hangs there, unwilling to move, too hot and sun-baked to exert any energy at all in returning to the good earth.


after what feels like at least 150 miles in, we find camp just as the few stray clouds are catching fire on the western skyline.


tents are set up and the three of us have tea. our cook, moshi, makes a delicious dinner of pasta with roasted vegetable sauce.

dusk falls quickly and anonymously. kellie is inside the tent changing. random and i pace around outside in our flip-flops, brushing our teeth; making our mothers proud. suddenly, out of the tall grass and scrub 5 feet behind the tent, a large hyena jumps out and bounds past us.

no need for ghost stories tonight. there are huge carnivores with jaws that can crush bone lurking in the perimeter grasses.

it’s been a long day of rough traveling and we decide to go to bed early. the three of us crawl into our greasy fartsacks just as the silver stars are swimming up from deep blue space.

after breakfast we are off, into africa. driving aimlessly across this great open space. the serengeti is basically just a big zoo; where creatures come to look at other, less fortunate ones on display in their metal and rubber cages of captivity. the exhibits are all basically the same: 3-5 sunburned mzungus of assorted age, speed, and body fat percentages; all poking their heads out of the moving aluminum box. many have tasty khaki shells and crunchy cameras or binoculars around their necks. the single, darker-skinned specimen always sits safely inside at the front, playing with a wheel: clearly smarter than the rest of his cagemates.

under this artificially protective arrangement, mother nature is prevented from her grim but essential duty: weeding out the sick and elderly from the herd.

king, our driver, is busily texting away and occasionally answering one of his two cell phones. i am flabbergasted and offended that anyone, especially a guide, would have the gall to bring the single greatest downfall of western syphilization onto the pure prairies. into the waning wilderness. turning the vast into the venereal. this will become a major theme of the trip; king and his texting. instead, i focus outside.

life is harsh here. struggling to find food while avoiding becoming food yourself. there are no guarantees; those biped inventions to insulate our precarious existence. in the west, we hide and pretend we are safe in a society that offers sterile, sanitary, imaginary bubbles. we have life insurance, car insurance, health insurance.

in the wild, there is no health care. in the wild, health care is: “ow, i hurt my leg. i can't run. a lion eats me. i'm dead.”

on this mornings' game drive, lions are strolling next to our land cruiser. leopards are lounging in rocky outcroppings; a cheetah is enjoying a fresh kill. the vultures give him some space, but sometimes try to creep in for a taste of carcass. all it takes is a single glance to send them scampering. they wait impatiently for an unearned, undeserved bite.



death is not a cessation here. it is merely a part of this transcendent tour called life. each cell, each atom, will become a part of something else. the law of conservation of mass ensures that nothing is lost.

here on the serengeti, animals kill for food; merely for survival. it is raw, brutal, and honest. necessary. never excessive or nonessential. water buffaloes don’t develop chemical and nuclear weapons to exterminate the wildebeest for eating their grass. leopards don’t declare jihad on cheetahs. of all the species sharing this watery rock we call home, only homo sapiens manage that.

in front of the truck: elephants crossing the road in single file, though somewhat disappointingly not linked by trunks and tails. i think back to my childhood. dumbo is full of shit, man.


besides these big guys and the kitty cats, we also see a ton of normal, everyday animals that we all take for granted; like gazelles, hyenas, baboons, warthogs, hippos, impalas, serval cats, wildebeest, zebras, giraffes, mongoose, dik-diks, water buffaloes, and monkeys.





behind the next rise, under the shade of a solitary acacia, is a piano. elton john is singing the circle of life. all the animals go about their day, looking for food and water; though never pausing too long in one place. trying not to be a part of the circle of life, just yet.

we cruise on steadily, standing up through the moon roofs, wind in our hair. stratocumulus provide a welcome, insulative ceiling from the relentless hydrogen fusion going on overhead. a few breaks let the light cascade through the dusty atmosphere, putting us all in a contemplative, freeing, and adventurous mindset.


stealthily, king brings the land cruiser to a stop. the three of us strain our eyes to detect movement in the silently swaying grasses around us.

do you see anything?
no. do you?
no.

i look inside. king has stopped to devote his full attention to typing the current text. i try to think of something witty and sarcastic to say, but these things are lost on people with limited english. instead, i try to focus on the positive: overall we have seen an incredible amount of animals so far. also a staggering number of wild text messages.

returning to camp at lunchtime, we find moshi has prepared another calorific feast. the combination of full stomachs and midday heat is too much to fight off. everyone falls into a food coma.

i awake from my catnap, the dry chalky taste of dead rat in my mouth. out of the corner of my eye, i see a monkey with the brightest blue balls ever eagerly ambling toward a familiar tent. inside, random is passed out on broil; naked except for a pair of shorts, with one leg hanging out of his unzipped pyrogenic chamber. the monkey goes straight in, yelling OO OO AH AH and jumps on random’s face, jarring my sleepy amigo right out of his daze. WHAT THE FUCK?!?! OO OO AH AH GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!!


no, not really. the monkey did go near the tent, but then jumped up into a nearby tree and stroked his bright blue balls instead. but part of me wished he had jumped in with random.

the ruckus dies down and we fall asleep again.


that relentless fireball bears down from overhead, a silent white scream through 93 million miles of space. the heat is suffocating, barely tolerable in the shade of an acacia. this is winter in the serengeti. the wind seems nonexistent in this world of heat and dust.

slowly, inaudibly at first, the breeze picks up; then dies away.

i dream of latin girls. the twirling swirling ones, dancing flamenco.

a 30-foot diameter dust devil tornado whirls its way into camp, right over the top of my skyward facing face; flinging stinging sand grains and bits of branches into unprotected skin, uprooting tents and snapping their poles like toothpicks. it pauses in the main parking area and does a roadside ghost dance. this sermon is free. for a full minute, the pulverized powder is sucked up and spat out the top, swirling hundreds of feet into the air. the dancing devil quickly dies away into the same ethereal seclusion it came from.

the vortex’s vaporous spirit abandons it’s corpus of dust and vanishes into the hot african sky.

around 4, the sun has sunk sufficiently in aspect to go out again, and we do another game drive. this time the animals are strangely nonexistent. as mysterious and undetected as the beginnings of a dust devil. we drive for hours. flues of photons poke through the broken stratus, onto this endless plain. nothing. the animals must all be hiding from the heat and taking a siesta.


the one thing that is out, and out in force, is the tse tse fly. they ravage my youthful, unexplored and overexposed flesh with their relentless, needle-sharp incisive biting. if i lived on the serengeti, with my supple and vulnerable naked pink ass wandering amongst the savannah grasses, the tse tse flies would have me wishing to be eaten by a lion. it would be a blessing. instead, i put my pants and socks on, and some bug spray. they relent.

the flaming solar meatball is about to roll off the tablelands. and although no one wants to admit it, we are going to have to turn around soon if we want to find camp before it’s dark. just before this unwelcome moment forces itself undeniably upon us, we spot them. a meandering parade: walking in a string under the green-topped acacias lining the dry creek bed.

elephants.

they quietly feed as cool, slanting shafts of light illuminate swaying fields of gold. a river of wind rustles in the yellow stalks, and dies away. silence.


after a private era in this quiet place with these strong, intelligent and gentle creatures, i look at kellie. “i think grandpa would like it here.” she scatters some of his ashes and we drive back in the gathering dark.


******


the next day we rise early and are on our way before it’s light.

sunrise in the serengeti: the silence; the sound of wind blowing in a wide open space.


the universe decrees that our path will cross this day with a solitary acacia; just as the flaming phoenix rises from the ashes to re-ignite the tinder-dry african air.

today is cat day, with our lonely land cruiser coming across innumerable lions, cheetahs, and leopards. they are everywhere.



later, after a lull in the action, we stop behind another vehicle. the laughing occupants are all fixated on a dark form in the distance. i bring the binoculars to my eyes and zoom.

two ostriches are fucking their brains out; feathers flying everywhere, grass trampled, zebras and wildebeest fleeing in fright. how much more vigorous would sex be if you knew you could be eaten by a lion during coitous? the inevitable jokes about lighting a cigarette after and the lack of foreplay and such follow. ah, mating. speaking of mating, king also appears to be looking for a mate: texting away again. he seems to have an incredible amount of textual relationships. i’m sure his wife has no idea about that second cell phone.

we pass some impalas. it is one male with about 18 females. this, apparently, is typical for the breed. one king-daddy dingaling with the ladies, and a separate bachelor herd. random and i discuss the merits and drawbacks of this arrangement, laying out a full cost-benefit analysis. we have chosen exile for ourselves at this point in our lives. my sister rolls her eyes.

out of the hundreds of different safari organizers, by chance another land cruiser from our same company passes by. filled with 4 argentine women. one of them has black hair and those 80% cocoa dark chocolate eyes that always make me tongue-tied and hopeless. i tighten my grip on the roll bars to compensate for the loss of balance.

i guess we are all looking for a mate out here in the wide open endless plains. someone to be joined with. intertwined with.


my sister misses her husband. random and i can’t settle down, and yet we each crave that missing female inverse.


******


sometime, long after the road dust has settled and it is quiet and still, the sunshine nudges a few rays through a fiery, nebulous curtain for the final performance of the day. silhouetted shade trees line a dry creek bed. it has not rained for some time.

at dusk, the elephants like to gather here.

a grandfather acacia, now expired, is slowly returning to the elements. its' years of shade are now over, but it itself is timeless.

death is not a cessation.

a gentle breeze begins, hushed in the tall stalks. the silent stream of wind over the prairie gathers force in the fading day. it lifts the dry, hot, shared dust of generations. it lifts the life of a great man, swirling it forever, inseparably intertwined with all those who have gone before. and all of us who will follow.