Much of what I studied as a philosophy student is now murky. I've retained a lot of men's names, many of them come uncoupled from the contributions which made worth knowing. I've got a tacklebox of academic terminology and a little tangled Latin. I've also got some half-remembered logical proofs, which cannot quite be persuaded into the full light of my awareness, and instead plod around the low plains of my brain as quadrupedal skeletons, perpetually in the semi-darkness after sunset, on a slow migration to nowhere.
I am home from South Africa today, just returned from a safari. The safari was the very generous gift a friend, for whom I served as a bridesmaid in a Johannesburg wedding ceremony. Sixteen of us, hailing from a half a dozen countries, traveled in two vans to arrive at the gate of the Nkomazi Game Reserve. We were loaded onto a pair of powerful all-terrain vehicle and taken to the lodge for an evening meal by firelight. I stayed up late with the Welsh couple and the South African groom, all of whom held their liquor more gracefully than I could.
In the morning, we woke at 5:30 and administered whatever hangover curatives were prescribed by our respective cultural traditions. Marmite for some. Juice for others. Eggs for most.
Many safari tourists are eager to check off the Big 5: to see the large, fierce African animals most difficult to hunt. Lions, black rhinos, leopards, Cape buffalos and elephant.

I'm not a naturalist at heart. My heart is more sensitive to dry humor and iced whiskey and a certain brand of angst that has had all the adolescent topnotes boiled off. But many times, I found my hand shooting out of its own accord—often rudely close to the face of my neighbor—to point at whatever wonder trampled past. Paul, our guide, pulled our vehicle alongside a pair of lionesses and their cubs as they feasted on a warthog, whose bones we heard cracking. We saw white rhinos (who walk and eat while sleeping), distant baboons, elephants, impala, and the secretarybird—so named because she appears as if she is carrying pens speared through her hair (and in that way, resembles this blogger). The enthusiasms evoked on safari are of a gradeschool, uncomplicated variety. I think I shouted Look! a dozen times after I promised myself that I would stop shouting Look! to people who were present for the express purpose of looking.
I peppered Paul with questions in a forced whisper. Is it high iron content that makes the earth so red? Manganese. If two different kinds of zebras mate, are their offspring infertile? Yes. And stripeless. Do people always go this nuts on the first day then chill out on the second ride? You have no idea.
On a walk Paul explained that termites build mounds of the red earth, some of which are feet high, emerging above the dry grasses. The mounds can be 160 years old and the termites that live in them don't eat wood. Instead, they subsist on fungi gardens that they cultivate underground. The termites are meticulous in tending their estates; they regulate the temperature of the fungi by constantly opening and closing countless little ducts that vent at the surface of the mound. This method (copied by human builders for passive cooling and heating systems) maintains a steady temperature of 28-32 degrees Celsius.
Dominant lions walk the perimeter of their territory every 14 days, marking ground and reaffirming their pride's claim to the land and the prey living on it.