three years and change since I went to Africa. I have a disk of photographs and notes, and it has been my intention since I got back to organize them into something I can print at Lulu or one of the other small publishers.

I have a good start at it, but every time I sit down and start working on it I start looking through the book of notes and the pictures and the memories pour back into me, and I drift off into the flats, laying up in the elephant grass shooting lechwe.

It’s very difficult, then, to go on. The yapping of the hyenas at night and the bushbabies climbing down out of the trees to stare into the campfire, the whole deal calls to me across an ocean, across a continent and a half, and wants for me to be there. To wake before dawn and hear the birds sing the sun up. To roast tilapia on a stick over exotic hardwoods. To be feral, for all intents and purposes, to be more comfortable in boots and jeans with a large bore rifle slung over your shoulder. To boil water and pour it in a bucket hanging from a tree to shower. To Hike through the bush and fall asleep before your head hits the pillow.

These things I dream of. Not the sleepwise dreams of the Id but the daydreams of a man who has seen the place where he was once and truly at home, and to have pulled away from it back to his chosen responsibilities.

One of my younger hunting companions is there now, not hunting but working, and I would pull out a tooth or two to be alongside him. Someday soon, I hope I will return, even if only for another little taste of what I know my heart wants so badly these days.