The escarpment that beckons me to my writing spot is like the face of this reserve. All of the organs: the heart, the lungs, the stomach that swallows up each kill, are broken into chambers of forest and riverbed and savanna. The face, the part of this being that displays every shift in mood and intent is on the surface of the giant escarpment that looms over it all.
I’ve taken a thousand pictures of this one angle of the escarpment that I face each day from the chair on my tent platform. I spend most of my life trying to capture images with some odd combination of photos and words and numbers on spreadsheets. The many moods of this reserve are impossible to comprehend with any combination of these though. So, sometimes, I’ve just taken to watching.
I watch the sweet, warm shades of pink and orange and deep red that bleed from the sky and drip behind it in the evening. When the sun is high and bright, I study the million shades of green and brown that stripe and spot it like black on a sheet of music. My favorite time to meet faces with my escarpment is when its mood turns intense and dark. When the green notes hide behind a thick veil of gray, and the breaths of the forest, the birds and the monkeys, turn silent. I can see this warning before the darkness blows to my own face and the rain pelts my skin. This is the only place in the world that I love a good storm. At least my escarpment always warns me.
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