27 Being alone
Larry Coons and I were together every day from September 1969 until mid-June 1970, when Larry flew back to Texas. Then most of the time before I left the Kalahari in mid-October, I would be alone (below).
Larry and I spent our last two weeks together traveling up through the Kalahari on deep sand tracks from Upington (South Africa) in the far south to Chobe National Park (Botswana) in the far north(~ 1400 miles). We would visit David Simpson in Chobe, stop briefly at Victoria Falls before heading to Johannesburg (Larry’s departure airport). Petrol was predictably available in only two villages between the border and Chobe (~ 750 miles). Before leaving Upington, we loaded petrol into both of Molly’s gas tanks, two 5-gal jerry cans, and a 44-gal drum, positioned just behind the front seats. Molly was potentially a bomb.
The driving was demanding. In 1970, there were only 3 miles of paved roads in Botswana (almost as large as Texas), and these were nowhere near in the Kalahari. The stretch from the border to Ghanzi (~ 400 miles) was often heavy sand, and the two ruts left by big lorries were farther apart than Molly’s tires. So, when we positioned her left wheels into the left rut, and her right wheels were forced to plow through the high-center sand. Driving was slow (sometimes only 5 to 10 mph) and tiring.
The road maps of Botswana marginally useful, especially in the north, We didn’t have a compass and just headed roughly north and east. [Note: for obvious reasons, we never referred to our travel as “dead reckoning.”] The stretch between Moremi and Chobe National Park (~ 140 airline miles) was navagationally challenging, as the many tracks built by hunting concessions were unmarked and networked chaotically.
We left Moremi on a narrow track in late afternoon. At sunset, a leopard suddenly ran right in front of us, climbed to the top of a termite mound perhaps 75 meters away, and stood looking at us while silhouetted against the glowing sunset. We started to reach for our cameras, as this was a once-in-a-lifetime image, but stopped. Instead, we chose to fix this image in our memories, as the leopard might have spooked it we moved. Larry and I can still see that leopard in our minds.
We continued driving at night for an hour or two and then camped. Early the next morning we were back on a unmarked dirt track that would take us (we hoped) to Chobe. If Molly broke down or if we got hopelessly lost on the myriad of hunting tracks, we would be in real trouble. We certainly felt lost but continued aiming northeast, hopefully aiming toward Chobe.
Early afternoon, we came across a lone traveler, who’d stopped to cook a meal. We were delighted and relieved to see him, as we’d seen no one since leaving Moremi almost 24 hours earlier. After saying hello, we asked if we were on the right track to Chobe. He chuckled and said, “I was about to ask you the same question!” We decided to caravan together and within a few hours arrived in Chobe, where we found David Simpson.
We spent four delightful days with David, who was doing his Ph.D. research on bushbuck (Chapter 28). But we had been on the road for 9 days – without a shower. David took us for a ride in the Chobe River to see bushbuck, crocodiles, and Fish Eagles. He had a small boat with an outboard motor. Larry and I sat in toward the bow, and David was effectively downwind of us. At some point he had had enough of our body odor and told us to jump in for a swim in the middle of the Chobe River (we hadn’t learned about tigerfish yet). We did enjoy that bath, but I’m sure David appreciated it even more.
Then Larry and I drove to Victoria Falls and next to the airport in Johannesburg (~750 miles from Chobe). There we said goodbye. We had shared a trip and adventure of a lifetime. We never had a cross word.
Before Larry left, I’d thought about being alone in the Kalahari. I would have to be careful. I would be in trouble if I broke an ankle from jumping off the Land Rover, was bitten by a horned adder or cobra, or stung by a parabuthid scorpion. If I was injured, driving to the hospital could take many hours, assuming I could drive. I would need to be especially careful in the Gemsbok Park, where a solitary herper might be “easy pickings” for a lion, leopard, or spotted hyena. Moreover, I’d never been alone for more than a few consecutive hours in my entire life. How I would respond to sustained isolation?
I visualized various scenarios, hoping to prepare for issues that might arise once I was back in the Kalahari (still a two-day drive from the airport). But the reality of being on my own hit much sooner: it hit me just a few miles after the airport. And it hit with a surprise and a gut check.
Some background is required to frame the scene. When I ordered ‘Molly’ from England, I chose a left-hand drive model, as I intended to take her back to the States at the end of my trip. However, vehicles in southern Africa all have right-hand drive, as cars drive down the left lane, as in the UK and Australia.
Leaving the airport, I was soon driving along a two-lane road and approached a slow lorry that I wanted to pass. I was in the left lane and reailzed that could not see around the right side of the lorry. When Larry had been riding shotgun, he would look around any lorry and tell me whether it was safe to pass. I’d return the favor when he was driving.
But now Larry wasn’t there. I knew I would want to pass many lorries over the next months, but how would I know whether passing was safe? Suddennly, I realized that I already alone and on my own. I had expected to have “alone-ness” anxiety once I was back in the Kalahari itself, but I never anticipated being struck by it a few miles from the airport.
I knew I needed to figure out a safe way to pass slow lorries, simply because almost all of my driving would be two-lane (or no-lane) roads. Fortunately, I quickly solved this problem. Whenever I approached a slow lorry, I would edge part way into the oncoming lane, so I could see around the lorry. I’d continue to straddle the center of the road as I approached the lorry either until I was close enough to pass safely or until I saw an oncoming vehicle, in which case I’d retreat to the left lane, back off some distance, and then gradually approach the lorry again. This solution generally worked fine, unless traffic was heavy or roads were curvy. It sometimes failed miserably when I was stuck behind “many-wheeled” lorries on dirt tracks, as the lorry’s dust cloud obscured all vision. Fortunately, this was rare.
Back in the Kalahari, I was mostly alone from July to mid-October, except for a few weeks in July, when Duncan Christie, a talented high school student joined me. I quickly adjusted to being alone – no more sharing chores or joys with Larry as now I did everything.
This was now winter in the Kalahari. July and August were often cold, overcast, and windy. Nocturnal geckos and even some diurnal lizards were hibernating, and lizards that weren’t hibernating would venture out only on warm days and then only for a few hours. My working hours were few. What a change from the long working days of summer!
I spent a lot of time in my tent and put that time to good use. I studied calculus, which was a conspicuous gap in my education. And I began to sketch. I’d never done that, even though I came from an artistic family. My father had worked his way through USC by doing artwork for Cecil B. DeMille, the great Hollywood director. My mother painted as a girl and was skilled at crafts. My sister has an eye for design. I still treasure a fire-baked clay “lizard” that she made and gave me in high school, long before my herp inclinations were apparent.
I saved my Kalahari sketchbook. I really enjoyed the activity, even though my abilities are limited. I sketched birds, drew cartoons, and inked an abstracted woman.
Those months of solitude provided the most liberating experience of my life. Granted, I was cautious when walking about in the veld, but I felt completely free to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I didn’t need to worry whether something I did would piss someone off, or whether they would like my latest sketch, or sneer at my mathematical limitations. I was free – I loved it. I was surprised as I never anticipated that I would enjoy being alone. I was a happy camper.
By late September, the desert warm enough so that I could hunt lizards on most days. And it was warm enough for me to shed long pants and a shirt (usually smelly). I went back to my minimalist “warm-season” attire: shorts, belt, sack for carrying lizards, Rapidograph pen, field notebook in my back pocket, binoculars, bird guide, trenching tool for digging Typhlosaurus (Chapter 17), BB gun, and boots. This open-air attire seemed like a good idea at the time (skin cancer was not yet conspicuous on the public agenda), and I was delighted to have a minimal tan, as I have fair skin and never tan readily or deeply. [Once after a long soak in a hot bath, I later learned my prized tan was merely ground in Kalahari dirt.]
One one spring day I was at our Tsabong site in Botswana. The nearest village was 11+ km away, and I never saw anyone on the site. So why wear shorts? Of course, I still needed a belt to hold the lizard sacks and my data notebook and pen, but I really didn’t need the shorts, which served no purpose that far from civilization.
So, I got “dressed” in the tent (minus shorts) and stepped out into the desert. The fresh air felt liberating against my bare skin, but I made the mistake of looking down at myself. Instantly I decided that going short-less in the Kalahari was a bad idea. I fled back into the tent, put on my shorts, and emerged. I may have become “more” liberated by being alone, but I was not fully liberated.
I deeply loved my last months in the Kalahari. As the trip was ending, I realized how much I’d gained. Yet I knew that I really needed another month or two of being alone to cement those gains. However, it was time to head home and move to Cambridge.
So I left the Kalahari. I was less than 100% free and liberated, but vastly more free and liberated than I’d ever been in my life. I knew my next challenges would be to maintain that freedom when I returned to civilization, to relearn how to be a social animal, and to resume my graduate education, this time at Harvard. These challenges proved hard.