I'm sorry I've been gone awhile. It's only that I have been flirting with death.
We spend our days with her, see, here at Mpala, have been for a little while now. We've seen her in her newness, rigor mortis, exploded eyeballs, and all. We've held her and touched her, years after she's come and gone. We've seen both her clients and her children. We've spent time with them. Days.
I should perhaps clarify. We've begun studying bones. And Kenya, the rift valley, this land of carnivores and their massive extraordinary prey is apparently the place to do it.
So we've traveled from carcass to carcass, piecing them together like puzzles. We've carried a camel killed by lions from boma to valley, held our noses while we maneuvered it into a cage, hoped hyenas would not get in so the scientists here might be able to study the skeleton after decay. At the foot of a mountain, we searched for hours for an elephant's ulna, finally finding it, hidden beneath grass. It went from the ground to my diaphragm upright. We've gone from location to location, and at each stop learned a bit more about the anatomy of the animals around us from the shape of their skulls. I can identify cervical vertebrae by sight now. I know what tendon connective tissue looks like years after the rest of the animal's been consumed, the way it twists, dry, brittle, and brown - almost like grass. I know the peculiar shape of a carnivore's tooth mark, the particular way hyenas will gnaw at a rib until the cancellous bone shows through. I've held skulls in my hand, traced the inside of a brain canal, brushed aside spider webs to delicately run a finger along the inner enamel of an unused tooth before gently returning the jaw to the ground.
Today, we went to two elephant carcasses. The second was unique in its newness. The elephant had died in July, or August, and so it was the most recent skeleton we had seen to date. Each bone was in its first stages of weathering, some were still greasy to the touch. Nearly all had connective tissue attached on some end. The animal, before death, had been massive.
The bones had been dragged all over the place. Some lay over two hundred meters from the kill site, others were nearby but buried already under grass and growth. It is green here, early. The acacia trees have begun to bloom. Plants I've never seen before burst from the ground, twining their curly feelers out and around. Everything looks greener and brighter than usual, fresh in some way. Spring does not really exist here, but this feels like spring.
We spent hours walking around, searching for the bones. The sun had gone back behind the clouds, and a light breeze blew. The air was finally a comfortable temperature. I walked alone for the first time in weeks, and felt, suddenly, completely and utterly at peace in the alien world. I stood still and just breathed, experiencing it all. The waving grass, up to my knees, golden and green, and periodically interspersed with trees and small yellow daffodils. The dried watering hole, its ground cracked six inches deep, flowers growing out of the little islands of dried mud. The mountains around at every angle, rising high into the sky above. The animal dens, deep in the ground, hidden by grass, dug by warthogs and other fantastical things. I knew my friends were nearby, but I could not see them. I felt at home, peaceful, still. Life as it had come, and would go, lay around me in all places.
I have learned that we are surrounded by bones. I have learned that the body is a vessel, and still, deserves a burial, respect after leaving. How insane it is, I cannot describe, to spend the afternoon carefully taking notes on the skeleton of an elephant, only to see a herd of them eating an hour later. When we leave a site, we thank the bones. I try to be as respectful as I can. We are lucky to handle the physical body on its journey to life when it has found death.
I will be honest with you, I am not the biggest fan of Paleoecology. I find it tedious to talk and study the ancient dirt, grass, and bones. But taking this class here is a lesson in life force. I've never been so closely confronted with physical aftermath of death. Here it is. It's going to be okay.