Exploring Tanzania

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The Safari as Journey: My Introduction to Bush Country

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The Safari as Journey: My Introduction to Bush Country

We pitched our duffels and then ourselves into Saidi's knobby-wheeled truck. Saidi found the gear and we lurched forward. Our aim was to encounter the wildness of East Africa, God-willing, in a bloodless way.

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What we Learned from Kilimanjaro's Shrinking Ice Cap

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What we Learned from Kilimanjaro's Shrinking Ice Cap

Explore three takeaways about the arrival and disappearance of Kilimanjaro's icy cap.

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Then I Let Myself Believe It: The Push to Kili's Rim

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Then I Let Myself Believe It: The Push to Kili's Rim

I caught her in my headlamp. She might have pretty in another place but she was beyond defeat here, maybe even beyond consciousness. She was draped between the wings of two laboring guides. Her head was lolling. Her toes were dragging. That little Piper had stalled.

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The most interesting man in the world

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The most interesting man in the world

Ernest Hemingway dangled a riddle of death at the front end of his short story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." But what kind of epigraph is this? A freeze-dried window decoration? A chewy historical tidbit? The most interesting man in the world may have solved the riddle.

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It has an odd ring

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It has an odd ring

The old king climbed into the icy womb of Kilimanjaro. On his finger was the ring of Solomon. His porters carried a vast treasure. None of it has ever been found, of course.

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15K+

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15K+

It was one of those nice mattresses with a heat-reflective layer that is supposed to keep you snuggly warm even if you choose to bed down on an iceberg or glacier or such. It also shared many qualities with a Wham-O Slip-'n-slide.

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Starry night

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Starry night

The icy peak was silhouetted against the night sky. But the longer I looked, the more I saw. And the more I saw, the less I noticed the mountain of our obsession. It was stars--sweet Jesus!--the stars that dominated this glorious night. They were everywhere, from horizon to horizon.

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Breakfast scramble

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Breakfast scramble

The icy stream clawed at the bottom of the ravine. This contest of strength was initiated more than a century of millennia ago. Water versus rock. Fluid versus solid. Speed versus size. It is difficult to imagine a struggle more sublime . . . or primal.

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Valley of the giants

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Valley of the giants

We knew that were no longer alone. Giants began to arise. Initially, they appeared as isolated figures with bad haircuts. Then they rallied and arrayed themselves on both sides of the trail.

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Shark fin and teeth

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Shark fin and teeth

Jason offered a weather report at breakfast. "It's two degrees above zero" (it sounds more sinister in celsius). 

He meant no evil, nor did I return it, but his words did prompt a flashback to my days of fieldwork in the deserts of Jordan.

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A stone-cold cauldron

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A stone-cold cauldron

At some point in the distant past, planetary nausea triggered a spew of subterranean chunder. The blow was horrific enough to empty a mountain of structural support, causing it to collapse into its own throat.