How many times in life does anyone get to see an entirely different world, which makes one question all the old familiar things? Rick Bass, an environmental writer based in Montana, poses this question to readers in his new book, ?The Black Rhinos of Namibia,? a conservation and adventure story set in the mean expanses of southwest Africa?s Namib Desert.
?I?ve been in the world a pretty long time now and I was no longer accustomed to that experience of seeing something so dramatically new,? Mr. Bass said in an interview. ?The newness of things was what was so powerful to me.?
At times, he felt himself reacting as his 6-year-old daughter had when she first snorkeled in a coral reef. Overwhelmed by the colorful circus of fish and corals below her, her delighted laughter, ?peal-ish and bell-like,? wafted through her mask to her father?s ears. Seeing animals like giraffes and elephants towering above trees, Mr. Bass said he was overcome by that same giddiness of ?feeling dizzily like a child.?
As he describes it in the book, seeing a rhinoceros in the wild crystallizes that wonder. The critically endangered black rhino, a species that once ranged widely across Africa?s savannahs, now lingers on only in scattered populations in Namibia ? the animal?s stronghold ? and South Africa. He was determined to seek out not captive rhinos housed at zoos or docile specimens found in tourist-laden national parks, but genuine wild rhinos.
To that end, he tagged along with a group of students from Round River Conservation Studies and befriended a local rhino conservationist, Mike Hearn. Mr. Hearn died in 2005.
Along the way he encountered a ?3,000-pound, squinty-eyed giant that sports three-foot-long dagger horns, lives off poisonous plants, and goes for days without water,? a female rhino whose Namibian name meant, roughly, ?She belongs to nobody.? She was called Tina for short and was accompanied by her new calf, ?goofy, stubborn, muscle-clotted, trip-clumsy, alternately insecure and bold.?
?A rhino in the wild living under its own evolved habits and processes and routines is just a thing of incredible biological integrity, an incredible force,? Mr. Bass said in the interview.
Crouched in some boulders and high grass just outside of the nearsighted creature?s sphere of vision, Mr. Bass basked in the moment until, on her way to a watering hole, the rhino abruptly swiveled her massive body ? and horn ? toward the intruders. Mr. Bass writes it was ?as if the myth of our invisibility has somehow been stripped and scrubbed away.?
Knees shook as the female, about 20 yards away, peered at the spot where the visitors ? lacking weapons or vehicle of escape ? were waiting. An excruciating standstill ensues over three and a half pages of Mr. Bass?s book. In the end the female chose to retreat to her calf rather than charge. Mother and calf galloped away across the desert, and in the red haze of the horizon they seemed ?to grow metallic, to grow mythic.?
The researchers decided to name the new calf Ongoody, meaning ?She belongs to all of us.?
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=3a94fecdf68aedb331d9a99b90427339
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