“This place had seen time. This place had known time; truly, fully known and understood. Here, time was not measured by man’s modern calendar. Here, days and months and decades were meaningless. A millennium, a thousand years, was not even like a fraction of a second, and was paid less heed than we would lend to the blinking of our watery eye. For here, in the ageless valley, the earth had been growing, changing, and staying the same for more than a billion years. One-hundred million years ago, the planet festered her guts from deep within and formed the fistula that opened up upon the surface. One-hundred million years ago, when continents still settled from their drift, the first eruption must have been a beauty, monumentally proportioned and epic in its duration. Yet even that, when mountaintops disintegrate and the land shakes violently for a thousand miles in all directions, even that is like a baby’s burp when compared against the planet as a whole. And it passes. And the volcano becomes the caldera, a remnant, a reminder. And it remains—a lesion that spills the contents of Earth’s bowels out upon the planet’s skin. It stays. It is like a wen, a boil that persists. And the beauty that surrounds the sore seems prettier somehow. The imperfection serves to glorify the grandeur that surrounds it.” (From Bentari, first paragraph of ch. 19—“How It Goes”)

This passage opens the chapter in which Bentari reaches the place that he has only heard stories about, the Valley of Shadows—soon to become the arena for an odd, bloody battle and the end of a race for unimaginable riches. The valley creates a beautiful scene. But in it lies an ancient, deadly volcano. It’s most recent eruption spewed deadly gas and put a macabre ending to an old border dispute.

My story had to take place in Africa. My love for the place—its grandeur, its splendor, its danger—would not let me write about any other place. Africa—birthplace of Mankind. Africa—where today’s saddest and most pathetic living conditions persist! Africa—and her magnificent animals! Africa. The setting, the backdrop, the history for my little tale.

Photo: By Steve Siegel—in one of Tanzania’s magnificent national parks, circa 1999[1]

[1] For more about Tanzania parks see: http://www.tanzaniaparks.com/. To learn how tennis helped me to meet Jane Goodall see the 9/15/2009 blog entry at: http://www.tennis4life.org/Blog/?pid=224&bid=42&d=Tennis+Blog