There’s nothing extraordinary in the realization that the ends of the earth are wilderness. In many ways it’s why they’re the ends of the earth. In the case of Alaska, it’s radical climate, daylight hours, threatening geology frame the borders of our planet with what’s livable.

A wealth of biomass from the world’s great whales to many of its birds flock here as natural selection would want, to exploit the extreme nutrition that condenses itself in short periods each year. Think of it this way: the amount of sunshine is identical anyplace on earth. It’s just at the poles a lot more of it comes in their summer and none in their winter.

This means life adapts in strange ways, essentially living the life of Riley for about 3 months of the year and sleeping for the rest. Plants, inuit, and I dare say immigrant humans all adapt to that strange lifestyle.

But earth’s travelers aren’t anchored to any spot. So the world’s behemoth, the blue whale, and its most angelic if hyper bird, the hummingbird, make journey after journey here for the privilege of working 24 hours a day for three months.

It’s a work routine lots of young people aspire to!

When I first went to Alaska it was much different than today. The growth of earth has transformed Anchorage from a weirdo’s way station to a magnificent city. The wealth of neglected natural resources made the hillbilly a billionaire. Fairbanks was a cold place for airmen. Today its university leads research in astronomy and natural resources.

And there’s a lot more tourists.

Just like Africa. So our job is to recover, perhaps preserve, the thrills of the past.

Humans need thrills. Adrenalin is not just for avoiding the boss. We need to jolt our physiognomy every once and a while to keep it tuned up.

The scenery of Alaska and Africa is simply incomparable. There are many places in the world as expansive and awesome as Denali, and there are many places in the world as overwhelmingly beautiful as the plains of the Serengeti. But then, there’s also Prince William Sound and the Wrangells, Ngorongoro Crater and Manyara’s cliffs.

The compactness of beautiful, thrilling scenery in Alaska and Africa has no rival.

We get rather boring every now and again. But a lion and a bear are never boring. The natural world is dominated by sheer force buffeted by the brilliance of natural selection. It’s nice everywhere once in a while to be relieved of having to be clever, or make the right decision, or figure out your taxes.

It’s nice to be in a beautiful place where the order of everything is predetermined. It’s something of an intellectual copout – and certainly not what humans were built to do.

But humans are different from everything else, and in these great wildernesses we come to understand exactly how and why.

“Awe replaces anxiety,” Patricia Schultz writes in the New York Times.

Stay tuned! I’ll try to post pictures of our trip, but here’s a remarkable secret: I get less connectivity in Alaska than Africa!

We began the safari at one of the most beautiful and historic places near Arusha, Tanzania, the old Ngare Sero estate. People woke this morning to the wonderful clatter of cloud forest sounds of monkeys and giant birds.

Ngare Sero was built long ago as a home for hunters. It’s situated beautifully on the foothills of Mt. Meru about a mile high and benefits from rain much of the year and the beautiful clear streams that come off Africa’s 5th highest mountain.

Rebuilt for the discriminating tourist about a decade ago, clients enjoy the original manor house’s large verandah which overlooks the beautiful lake. In the thick forests which surround the lake are families of colobus monkey, the gorgeous black-and-white monkey with a white tail that looks like it comes from a horse!

These primates are among East Africa’s best “leapers” rivaling the great eland of the vast Serengeti plains. They can leap 40 feet from the top of a giant podacopurus onto wild mango and giant figs. We happen to be here now at the most wonderful time to watch colobus, since all the trees are in top fruit.

The forests also include lots of sykes monkey, which are larger and more subtly colored. Giant silvery-cheeked hornbill whose size and massive beak and horn are truly trumped by their very loud and raucous call.

So together with the deep grunts of the colobus and the frantic cawing of the hornbill, the beautiful whistles of the red-winged starling and chatter of the white-eared barbet, this is truly a bit of African paradise, the way so much of East Africa used to be.

But walk over the old bridge between the manor’s estate and the outside world, and you’ve emerged onto modern Africa: dense farms, convenience stores, and last night almost until midnight we listened to the screaming ranting of a local evangelist celebrating Easter Monday. During the day we’re close enough to the main Moshi/Arusha road to hear the trucks, and the cheers and boos of a local soccer match.

So civilization has definitely arrived. But this beautiful little alcove of ancient Africa is a wonderful way to begin anyone’s imagined adventure, and in this case, a real glimpse into Africa’s past!

Tomorrow we travel to the great national park of Tarangire. Stay tuned!

Our full day game viewing Monday was extraordinarily productive: 5 rhinos, 34 lion (one pride finishing a kill), and lots more.

The crater was greening up following several days of heavy rain and so was particularly beautiful.

As Nancy Weinstein said, “Seeing the rain on one side and the sun on the other with all the magnificent light” produces the ethereal reality of the crater, as if you’re in some controlled smaller space where so many different things are happening so fast.

The Up Road is closed for repairs, so everyone has to leave the crater on the Sopa Road.

This makes game viewing for some of the opposite side lodges, like Serena and Crater Lodge, particularly long.

We were staying at Gibb’s Farm so were prepared for the lengthy time getting in and out.

We also went in using the Sopa Road and weren’t a few minutes out of the Lehai Forest when we saw our first pride of lion.

I was pretty sure it was the Mti Mkubwa pride (“Big Tree”) and they were incredibly fat and sassy.

We figured there were five of them, but they were pretty far in the distance and totally sacked out. Patience is the key to exceptional game viewing and we waited for a while and sure enough, they began to get up one by one and walk towards us.

With more to view as they approached, it was clear they had hunted last night. Their bellies were bulging. And I noticed not far from where our cars were on the road that there was a gully, and with all the rain we’ve had, undoubtedly plenty to drink.

And that’s exactly what happened! After lions feast on their kill, they have to drink copious amounts of water or the 15% increase in body weight resting mostly unchewed in their tummies would clog their entire GI system.

Undoubtedly they had drunk once at least, but they were now returning to drink again. And after they did, they continued towards us onto the road! So there was more to their moving than just thirst.

I figured they were either returning to the kill or perhaps returning to where there were cubs waiting.

Lionesses “den” their cubs somewhere during the hunt, and the cubs obey. Sometimes an adult female will be left behind to baby sit, but not always, and it’s always amazed me how those little critters know not to follow mom.

That was just the beginning! We then proceeded to find rhino, huge families of buffalo, of course lots of zebra and wildebeest and even hartebeest and eland. Just before lunch, we went to the hippo pool near the central lake.

Lunch was great fun in front of the Loitokitok lake, which had more hippo in it than I remember in times past. The great treat was watching a grey heron standing on the back of a slightly submerged hippo, moving through the water as if slow water skiing!

(Our picnic lunch from Gibb’s Farm was specially outstanding, but of all the goodies included I’ll never forget the brownie! Amazing.)

We saw more rhinos on our way back, and more prides of lion, and golden jackals, serval cat and a number of great birds. The large numbers of Abdim and White storks are getting ready to migrate back to Europe, so there was a lot of colorful soaring.

And it was on the way out that we once again encountered the Mti Mkubwa pride, and this time a female was dragging around the skin of a young buffalo. So it had been the kill they were returning to.

And our last glimpse of activity in the crater as we raced to get out of the park in time was one of the giant tuskers that are dying off fast.

About 30 giant tuskers went into the crater when poaching became severe in the 1970s. The crater affords a natural protection to wildlife that makes poaching very difficult. But the crater isn’t a good habitat for elephant: there aren’t enough bushes and trees; it’s almost all grass.

But the Big Tuskers learned to eat grass and have stayed ever since. But they’re now well into their 60s and dying quickly. I expect they’ll all be gone in 2 or 3 years.

** And just a little aside about our game drive Sunday in Lake Manyara National Park. See the picture below. Manyara is known for lots of baboon, true.

But we watched a young bushbuck walk with them in near lock step, stopping when they did, moving when they did and where they did. For all the world it looked like it had been adopted by the troop!

And now into the Serengeti!