10:30pm, Rift Valley Pension, Arba Minch, October 13th:
We kidnapped a nice eighteen year old girl named Barukhat from the Crocodile Farm, and took her with us into Nechsar Park. She’d grown up in Arba Minch all her life, but had never stepped foot inside the Park, and she was very pleasant and this trip has been all about making friends everywhere we go. Picked up that nice ‘ranger’ too, forget his name, who helped us out so sportingly while we were stuck in the mud two days ago. And he brought his big gun this time.
I really enjoyed the park: we drove much further this time, all the way across the Nechsar Plain, to where the dramatic cloud-veiled mountains rise with staggering beauty up from the rift floor, in deep canyons and rocky steppes and ridges green and shaggy with exotic vegetation. I had what I’m certain has been the nicest moment of my trip so far, and may very well remain so until I’m home. We’d been approaching the feet of the mountains at the western edge of the plain, and I was watching great purple-grey rain clouds toss rain and sun across spectacular green folds. Abruptly and unexpectedly, the road plunged downward a bit and we were driving through a tunnel of great overhanging sycamores and vines, on a red-earth dirt track, with the windows down and fresh air blowing in on the front of the approaching storm. We encountered a short but treacherous mud pit, and considering the late hour and our experience of two days before, decided to make it the turn-around point. However, the guard and Shimeles and I got out and started to walk just a bit further on the road, to see what was immediately ahead. Tiny black ants appeared in ribbons across the road, in thick columns so dark they formed an opaque black band, and stepping through them, the ribbon immediately wrapped itself over my shoes and pant legs. Luckily they weren’t the biting type. Beautiful irredescent blue and green birds flitted through the underbrush, making strange chirps. Suddenly the track dropped, and disappeared straight into a swift-flowing brown river, maybe twenty feet wide, to reappear as deep, muddy tire tracks climbing the opposite bank. Need an engine snorkel to cross this one…
I loved this river. It was narrow, but deep, and muddy but very clean, and the surface was almost void of ripples, so smooth was the water. But it whipped past us at a very good rate, and I loved the smell of it, and the way it twisted and curved in sharp, blind bends, under a protective canopy of overhanging Acacias and Sycamores and other unknown arbors… leaning not oppressively, but just in such a way as to give the whole scene a feel of mystery, of excitement. I wanted more than anything to have a canoe just then, to hop in and pilot the craft on swift water through narrow bends and uncharted dark gorges, each surreal and sublime, as I was sure they’d be. Then the guide touched my shoulder and indicated upwards, into the branches of the Sycamores above us. Colobus Monkeys… five, then ten, then twenty, appeared, gazing down on us with wise, musing black faces ringed in white hair like the beard of an old ascetic, and then leapt with amazing agility and spunk through the branches of the gigantic tree, swinging and tumbling and flying, dangling alternately off of each of all four hands and tail… Their tails were the best part, long and black near the body, with a shaggy white end two to three feet long and just as nimble as the hands in flinging them about the treetop. Colobus Monkeys! In the wild!! From zoos, the Colobus have always been my favorite to watch, and here I’d found them wholly unexpectedly. It was so private and personal, too. Hadn’t seen a single other person up there the entire day, and it was quite likely we’d be the only ones today, tomorrow, the whole week perhaps. The isolation raised a tingling joy inside me, it tickled something deep down that had been neglected and ignored and that wanted so badly to stay there in the park and frolic in the gleeful alone-ness.
Before I forget, I should mention some of the things I spotted today during our six hours in Nechsar: Hornbill Toucans, Guenther’s Dik-Diks (always in pairs, with their funny tiny horns and dangling upper lip), a tortoise (which I picked up and removed from the road while he hissed at me… heavy feller!), the Burchell’s zebras, an enormous golden-maned warthog, Anubis baboons, some small Grant’s gazelles with forward pointing horns, and a herd of Swayne’s heartebeasts at a distance (I later spotted two solitary ones closer to the car, and they looked just like fantasy animals out of Narnia: great elegant animals with a shaggy hump but shaped like a large elk, only with a double set of antlers that look positively magical… or like an old multi-pronged TV antenna, if you’d prefer to think that way), and greater kudu antelopes (which are so cool, with their huge black spiraling horns), and a leopard (though only for a second) and a huge and amazing spiny thing that must be distantly related to porcupines. The Nechsar plain was spectacular, with the waving white-topped grass and poppies, yellow with blood-red centers. At one point, I got out of the car and was running ahead (Shimeles needed my fat ass out of the vehicle so he could get better clearance) and suddenly realized there was a great Kudu with its magnificent curly horns not 30 feet away and just watching me, with a big green bunch of leaves hanging out of his mouth. I thought of waiting quietly for Shimeles to drive up with the camera, but I couldn’t help myself. Some strange, long-buried predatory instinct rose up inside me and for about 10 brief seconds I was giving chase across the plains, part of the age-old game of hunter and hunted… and then I tripped on a round boulder and almost broke my ankle. Shimeles scolded me when I came back for chasing it away and foiling a good picture, but it felt good somehow, to have forced the wonderful animal to recognize and acknowledge me, to have that brief and personal interaction with it… to go away not only knowing I had seen an African Gazelle, but that it had also had a good and hard look at me.
Success with the NCSR point. Now we’re back at the hotel, and Barukat is in the next room with Shimeles. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s so damn smooth. He never fails to get any girl he wants, and he knows it. Is it just the confidence? I haven’t seen one girl say no to him. It’s amazing! It’s ridiculous! It’s inspirational! It’s… it’s… Shimeles. I guess there’s just some people who can pull that stuff off very, very well. The Naughty Professor.

In the Montana part of my brain, I’ve been thinking about kayaking, and climbing peaks, and camping under golden-leafed alders, and skiing deep powdery chutes. I was thinking about how much fun it was to kayak the north fork with Kristin this summer, and that got me thinking about the rest of my friends. Do I need more adventurers? Should I cut out all the ones that don’t pass the ‘outdoor action’ litmus test, so as to prevent my wasting any time doing things I don’t really want to do? Well, probably yes to the former and no to the latter. Should never get rid of friends, even if they have very different goals than you. It enriches the diversity of the social experience, I think. But I’ve been pledging to myself to get more involved in the right kind of social circles, especially in the Rocky Mountaineers. Meet this Forest Dean fellow. And, total nonsequitor, get involved in a ‘Negative Population Growth’ campaign too. Attend some zoning meetings, perhaps? All this travel continues to clarify the fact that what we have at home is SO unique… really nothing like it anywhere else in the world, and we’re all damn fools to let it slip through our fingers for personal profit, apathy, or lack of foresight. Gotta speak out on this one, it’ll eat me up if I don’t. Night, friends.