Well written Angus and I envy your Amazonian exploits. I can relate to what you write, if not capable of setting it to word as eloquently as you. Tracking and pushing the lion until he'll push no more and prepares to push back, elephant moving noiselessly through the bush that I couldn't navigate without making noise. Walking up to within feet of a herd in the equatorial rain forest, to hear their stomachs rumble and see the fear in our trackers as we realize just how close we are. The gorillas screaming and swearing at us from mere feet away behind the impenetrable tangle of leaves and vines, the amazement in their eyes as the come out on the old logging roads and sit and look for 100s of meters up and down the track. Never leaving one's accommodations without rifle in hand, the whooping of the hyena at night, followed by the angry snarl of a lion they have decided to harass.............Maybe there is a richer life to be had but I have not experienced it anywhere else........
Then there's the rare 15000 ft air of the Pamirs and the first glimpse of a band of Marco Polo sheep racing across the valley floor at a pace that would cause pronghorn to stop in awe. The unbelievable horns when you see your first rams, and you think back to when you were young and coveted such things without ever believing you would actually be standing there looking at your very first real Marco Polo rams. Or standing almost in tears as you gaze upon your Bongo still not believing you have actually succeeded in your quest.
The freezing wasteland that is Mongolia, the searing Oct bush in Zambia, the humid verdant jungle of the Congo, the arctic ice pack with it's intense silence and cold, the almost airless Pamir valley, with the 25000 plus foot peaks off in the distance in Afghanistan, Table Mountain and the meeting of the Indian and Atlantic oceans off Capetown..........words cannot begin to relate these experiences to others who may never be able to share them. The diverse cultures and history of various regions of the world, standing in the Matopos and looking down on Cecil John Rhodes grave, looking across Victoria Falls to the rock outcrop where it is said Stanley met Livingstone, hunting ground that may have been walked on by Bell or Taylor or Cornwallis Harris or John Boyes. Wandering about the taiga where Chinggis Khan and his armies once trained and fought, climbing a trail that was once the path of Marco Polo himself. These experiences are as much a part of my memories as the megafauna I pursued there.
There also comes a time of sadness when you realize that there are very few true quests left to you, there will always be those that are unobtainable because of laws and wars and scarcity, like the tiger, jaguar or snow leopard, or due to unreasonable expense like the black rhino. I have said before that I've had to reinvent my bucket list several times............there just isn't that many really cool and outstanding megafauna left for me, and my eyes are fading and waistline expanding and my body just generally feeling the years of work and abuse I have put it through. I will still hunt, but my days of chasing megafauna or high altitude sheep with a back pack are pretty much over, I will now content myself filling in some of the less strenuous niches. I still need 3 (I think) of the tiny ten of Southern Africa, the antelopes of East Africa and likely another buff from there, critters from Australia and South America...........And then there is always fishing, I guess........
