2-83（在线收听）

83.

I visited Botswana, spent a few days with Teej and Mike. I felt a craving for them, a physical needto go on a wander with Mike, to sit once more with my head in Teej’s lap, talking and feeling safe.

Feeling home.

The very end of 2015.

I took them into my confidence, told them about my battles with anxiety. We were by thecampfire, where such things were always best discussed. I told them I’d just recently found a fewthings that were sort of working.

So…there was hope.

For instance, therapy. I’d followed through on Willy’s suggestion, and while I hadn’t found atherapist I liked, simply speaking to a few had opened my mind to possibilities.

Also, one therapist said off-handedly that I was clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress,and that rang a bell. It got me moving, I thought, in the right direction.

Another thing that seemed to work was meditation. It quietened my racing mind, brought adegree of calm. I wasn’t one to pray, Nature was still my God, but in my worst moments I’d shutmy eyes and be still. Sometimes I’d also ask for help, though I was never sure whom I was asking.

Now and then I felt the presence of an answer.

Psychedelics did me some good as well. I’d experimented with them over the years, for fun,but now I’d begun to use them therapeutically, medicinally. They didn’t simply allow me toescape reality for a while, they let me redefine reality. Under the influence of these substances Iwas able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world beyond my heavilyfiltered senses, a world that was equally real and doubly beautiful—a world with no red mist, noreason for red mist. There was only truth.

After the psychedelics wore off my memory of that world would remain: This is not all thereis. All the great seers and philosophers say our daily life is an illusion. I always felt the truth inthat. But how reassuring it was, after nibbling a mushroom, or ingesting ayahuasca, to experienceit for myself.

The one remedy that proved most effective, however, was work. Helping others, doing somegood in the world, looking outward rather than in. That was the path. Africa and Invictus, thesehad long been the causes closest to my heart. But now I wanted to dive in deeper. Over the lastyear or so I’d spoken to helicopter pilots, veterinary surgeons, rangers, and they all told me that awar was on, a war to save the planet. War, you say?

Sign me up.

One small problem: Willy. Africa was his thing, he said. And he had the right to say this, orfelt he did, because he was the Heir. It was ever in his power to veto my thing, and he had everyintention of exercising, even flexing, that veto power.

We’d had some real rows about it, I told Teej and Mike. One day, we almost came to blows infront of our childhood mates, the sons of Emilie and Hugh. One of the sons asked: Why can’t youboth work on Africa?

Willy had a fit, flew at this son for daring to make such a suggestion. Because rhinos,elephants, that’s mine!

It was all so obvious. He cared less about finding his purpose or passion than about winninghis lifelong competition with me.

Over several more heated discussions, it emerged that Willy, when I’d gone to the North Pole,had sadly been resentful. He’d felt slighted that he hadn’t been the one invited. At the same timehe also said that he’d stepped aside, gallantly, that he’d permitted me to go, indeed that he’dpermitted all my work with wounded soldiers. I let you have veterans, why can’t you let me haveAfrican elephants and rhinos?

I complained to Teej and Mike that I’d finally seen my path, that I’d finally hit upon the thingthat could fill the hole in my heart left by soldiering, in fact a thing even more sustainable—andWilly was standing in my way.

They were aghast. Keep fighting, they said. There’s room for both of you in Africa. There’sneed for you both.

So, with their encouragement, I embarked on a four-month fact-finding trip, to educate myselfabout the truth of the ivory war. Botswana. Namibia. Tanzania. South Africa. I went to KrugerNational Park, a vast stretch of dry, barren land the size of Israel. In the war on poachers, Krugerwas the absolute front line. Its rhino populations, both black and white, were plummeting, due toarmies of poachers being incentivized by Chinese and Vietnamese crime syndicates. One rhinohorn fetched enormous sums, so for every poacher arrested, five more were ready to take theirplace.

Black rhinos were rarer, thus more valuable. They were also more dangerous. As browsers,they lived in thick bush, and wading in after them could be fatal. They didn’t know you were thereto help. I’d been charged a few times, and I was lucky to get away without being gored. (Tip:

Always know the location of the nearest tree branch, because you might need to jump onto it.) Ihad friends who’d not been so lucky.

White rhinos were more docile, and more plentiful, but perhaps wouldn’t be for long, becauseof that docility. As grazers, they also lived in open grassland. Easier to see, easier to shoot.

I went along on countless anti-poaching patrols. Over several days in Kruger, we always gotthere too late. I must have seen forty bullet-riddled rhino carcasses.

Poachers in other parts of South Africa, I learned, didn’t always shoot the rhinos. Bullets wereexpensive, and gunshots gave away their position. So they’d dart a rhino with a tranquilizer, thentake the horn while the rhino was asleep. The rhino would wake up with no face, then stumble intothe bush to die.

I assisted on one long surgery, on a rhino named Hope, repairing her face, patching theexposed membranes inside the hole that once cradled her horn. It left me and the whole surgicalteam traumatized. We all wondered if this was the right thing for the poor girl. She was in so muchpain.

But we just couldn’t let her go.