December 6, 2008
Of all the animals moving at dawn and dusk, my melancholia is the most predictably crepuscular in Amboseli. I rarely watch either the rising or setting sun in the states, but the two spectacles flank the most common of my days now. For those of us that see sadness in all that diffraction, then, it is just a string of grief and sorrow out here. Splendid grief and sorrow. A cyclical reminder not only that the day will end, but that it may well not live up to its promise.
I am deprived of the cocktail hours that must have evolved to soften this blow.
In short, I need a drink.
The urge to tack-down these hours of obvious Earth movement is so ubiquitous that many basic photography courses institute a rule. No sunrises. No sunsets. This protects students from inevitable failure. The whole of dusk and dawn is greater than the sum of its parts by at least an order of magnitude, and cameras can rarely do that kind of math.
Just summing the parts is hard enough. Driving east, looking for Omo's group, the daybreaking sun projects a crisp matte-black elephant silhouette. Jutting tusks and up swirled trunk, as if traced by an exacto knife. Driving back to camp, buttery magic hour rays drench the leaps and outstretched oven mitt paws of three lion cubs. It seems they are all trying to surf on the back of their mother. She has seen it all before, and remains unbothered until another adult female strikes a pose. Stealth, low, and spring-loaded. Both females disappear with purpose into the elephant grass. Dust flies. The zebra escapes.
Of course, these are just bookends on daytime surprises too. A wall of trees ringing the baboon-studded mudflats are not yellow-barked fever trees at all, but are so many giraffe, watching me watch baboons. With every afternoon shower I receive chattering accompaniment from the most appropriately named Beautiful Sunbird. And while I still cannot tell little Dipstick form the even littler Damien, I do now know that Nobel is not Noodle, that Liwaza is not Laos, and can recognize Kagame at a glance.
