Dear Wigleaf,

Greetings from Nanyuki, Kenya, a mile from the equator. I thought it would be hotter here, but the elevation—over 6,000 feet—keeps it balmy. Mt Kenya, the second tallest mountain in Africa, looms nearby, usually obscured by clouds. I recently read a novel where a character assumes people climb mountains in order to look down on others, but I think some people climb mountains in order to escape the world, and even after they descend, a piece of them lingers in the sky.

Half an hour away live the last two northern white rhinos on the planet, mother and daughter, transported a decade ago from a zoo in the Czech Republic. They're incapable of bearing offspring, but scientists have made embryos from their eggs and frozen sperm from a dead relative, which may be implanted in southern white rhino surrogates.

In a few days I will leave to tread lightly on another temporary home. I will take with me the oryx, the ostrich, the hyrax, and the hartebeest. I must preserve in my memory the golden-rumped elephant shrew and the vulturine guineafowl. I cannot forget the gerenuk, an antelope with an extra-long neck, like a child's drawing gone wrong. I make room for mousebirds and go-away birds, elephants, mongoose, hippos, hyenas, wildebeest, giraffes, dik-diks, chameleons, and of course the holy trinity of cats: lions, leopards, cheetahs.

With a memory so crowded, surely I won't get lonely.

Love always,
Claire