Lake Bishoftu warms with the sun, just rising. Its surface thickens - coppery - and over it, water birds paddle silty circles; stirring thin black trails like tendrils of incense in a traditional coffee ceremony. They’re feeding on insects we can’t see from our balcony over the cliff. But the activity from up here becomes an artwork. We’re waking
In the ethereal sunlight that blesses early mornings in Ethiopia’s high country, we walk a path under rare giants in the grounds of a monastery 700 years-old. African sandalwood and juniper, red-flowering kosso and heavy-limbed figs mark our way through ribbons of incense to the church and meditation cave of a great saint. If these old trees could talk. They
Just inside Nairobi National Park - in the red dirt and quiet hour of nearly-noon in wild places - our daughter Tula stands enchanted in the company of an elephant named Sana Sana. The elephant, herself a toddler, is so close we run fingers over her paper-crinkle skin. We count her eyelashes and puffs of dust from her footsteps stain our
