emily grace goodrich

“I can’t wait to see the lions,” my colleague said, clinging to the roof of the van in excitement.

The rest of us looked at each other and shook our heads. It’s certainly not impossible to spot big cats in Murchison Falls National Park- they do live there, after all- but we’d warned our visitor we weren’t likely to see any, especially during rainy season. There aren’t many lions in the park, and with the tall green grass that sprouts up with the precipitation, there are countless places for them to hide.

I’ve learned not to set many expectations for my travels here. Not only does Mother Nature have plans of her own, but car breakdowns, road construction, missing ingredients, and power outages all combine forces to keep you on your toes. The upside of this unpredictability is that Uganda often exceeds my expectations, and that trip was no exception.

After fields full of antelopes and giraffes, we finally slow to a crawl next to another van of our tourists watching a lion crouched next to the bushes in the distance. As our driver maneuvered back and forth in the small opening, trying to find a viewpoint, someone informed him that there was another one, just up the road. And indeed there was, not just one, but two. We watched them for ages, he and she, just going about their day as if vans full of snapping cameras were nothing they hadn’t seen before. Still, though, it’s a little surreal to see them in the wide open world, as they were meant to be. That’s the funny thing.

As the lions meandered out of sight, we moved toward the water to see Lake Albert in the morning sun. Shortly thereafter, though, our guide urged us back toward the vehicle and sped off down the road. “There’s a leopard,” he said, ignoring our requests to stop in a field of oribi. And suddenly there it was, crouched on the branches of a distant tree. We stopped breathing and watched in silence as it paced up and down the largest limbs for a few minutes before climbing down the trunk and disappearing into the grass below. While the rest of us were a bit dumbfounded, our visiting colleague seemed to expect it all along.

Lowering expectations may protect us from disappointments, but I wonder if it doesn’t sometimes stop us from experiencing the excitement of possibilities as well.

For ages, I’ve been constantly editing and re-editing a collection of short stories, true stories, gathered from interactions on planes, trains, buses, and in the waiting places in between connections. I’m not sure why, but people tend to tell me everything about themselves when we are next to each other on the bus.

I’ve been sitting on this project for years, figuring out where to send it, what to do with it, which stories to cut, which to keep. I finally just decided to put it out there into the world. So, here it is. Strange Conversation.

I often joke that on my 60th birthday, I’ll buy an expensive set of binoculars and a birding guidebook, then let my inner birder soar. This is only half in jest. Trekking to remote corners of the planet in search of anything never sounds like a bad idea. Whether or not those ornithological aspirations come to pass, in this current moment, I live in one of the most spectacular bird-watching regions in the world. As a service to my potential future self, I try to take advantage of any birding situations as they arise.

On my ever-growing Uganda bucketlist, “see the shoebill” was the easiest to accomplish, and the least like to be checked off. Proximity was the problem there- just as most people have never actually seen the Top 10 Musts Sees! in their own home towns, I have never bothered to explore much of Kampala or nearby Entebbe. Fortunately, my housemates recently planned a trip to welcome me back to Uganda after I’d spent two months away.

We drove to Entebbe and joined a tour group as they bused from their hotel to the docks. Together we sped off on the 45 minute journey across Lake Victoria to the edge of the Mabamba swamp where smaller canoes and local guides awaited us. As we navigated through small channels in the papyrus and swamp sawgrass, our guide plucked a few blue lotus blossoms from the water. He handed them to us with a lack of ceremony that suggested he picks them for all the tourists.

After quite awhile, we cut through a clearing in the tall papyrus and there it stood, alone on a small grassy island. Blaeniceps rex, the shoebill stork.

The shoebill is an enormous bird, usually 4-5 feet tall, with a wingspan of around 8 feet. Named for their bulbous shoe-like beaks, they are somehow both comical and majestic. Solitary creatures, they build less that three nests per square kilometer. They spend the days stalking the murky waters for lungfish, catfish, and tilapia.

The bird didn’t acknowledge the small herd of canoes surrounding it, staring only down at the water as it waited for fish. Still, it rewarded us with a few nonchalant postures at various angles. In some way, it seemed accustomed to the cameras.

When the clicking shutters slowed, the guides handed out water bottles and boxes of digestive biscuits. I nibbled through several of them, watching not just the bird but the surrounding canoes. What a strange situation, this collective encounter with just one small piece nature.

Still, though, we were lucky. There is only room for about nine of them to live in that area, and an encounter is not guaranteed. Satisfied, we rowed back across the swamp, passing a few fisherman’s encampments in the reeds, a few less thrilling bird species.

Again we glided through the calm waters of Lake Victoria in wooden speedboats. This time the sun shone in full force, dissolving the morning haze. The weather was flawless by the time we reached Entebbe, so we settled in for lunch along the palm-lined shore. As day trips go, this one was far better organized and more relaxing than any I’ve been on before. And someday, on my 60th birthday, I’ll have one less thing to check off my life list, one less regret.

One of the things I’ve learned from shooting wedding photos is how to edit and compose on the fly. Unfortunate exit sign in the church? Duck down and hide it behind the bride’s head, or turn a little to the left. Chain link fence blocking the view of the forest behind the happy couple? A soft focus blurs it into the rich green leaves of the background, erasing the unsightly gridlines. This false idealism is the theme of the day, and for the most part, we all play along. Travel photography often purports to tell a raw story, but the truth is that editing lives there too, or at least in my experience. Even in the remote salt pans of Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression, there are realities to crop out.

This spectacular part of the world is painted with wide white lakes of nothingness, ringed by hazy mountains. There, the salty brine pushes up from the earth and leaves behind a thick, deep crust of dirt-laden salt. As far back as anyone can remember, men with camels have walked 75 km-100km from the nearest large towns, Berahile and Mekele, to this strange barren desert. There, still more men work to cut uniform bricks of salt, which they sell to the traders with camels. These men stack and load them onto their animals, about 30 blocks each, and carry slowly away from the desert. In town, their value increases from 2 Ethiopian birr to nearly 15 birr per block. For both the traders and the miners, it is difficult but good work- a part of their culture and identity. Nearly all of Ethiopia’s salt comes from the lakes in that region.

The desert is sweltering and dry and uncomfortable, legitimately one of the hottest places on earth. Even the workers live there only seasonally, in the cool winter months of November to March, when the morning temperatures hover around the mid-80’s. Standing in the wide open center of it, I couldn’t imagine anywhere more isolated. Yet we were part of a large tour group, a caravan of 9. A few other chains of vehicles ringed the worksite in the distance. We stood in a group, snapping photos and asking questions through our translator, ducking out of each other’s viewfinders and waiting for the moment when the other guy wasn’t standing in front of the camels. I’ve never really traveled in a tour group before, and when I realized how much I was editing, I stopped to consider the absurdity of the situation. Now and then, through the rest of the trip, I remembered to turn my camera and capture another sort of reality. The longs lines of clicking shutters as the camels walked off into the sunset, the Ethiopian pilgrims snapping photos with their smart phones to commemorate their long journey to Lalibela.

There are virtually no places left on earth which remain untouched by technology and rapid change. In the Danakil, radio towers bring communications, and new roads mean accessibility for entrepreneurs and developers. In this case specifically, there are talks of opening a new salt factory that will process salt locally and make the camel traders obsolete. At the moment, travelers to the region must be accompanied by armed security guards, but if tensions with neighboring Eritrea ease, the new roads will bring more vehicles, tourists, and entrepreneurs to the region. The camel traders worry that their days are numbered. Does tourism increase the chances for their vocation to survive, or diminish them? Would new factories improve their income and opportunities or leave them destitute? I’m not really certain.

Reality in the Danakil, then, is not a land or a people untouched by time, as the salt pans may appear at first glance, as our images pretend to capture. The truth is that it exists in the space between two worlds, or really one changing world, and waits uneasily to see what tomorrow will bring.

“You go on ahead, maybe I’ll just wait here,” I said, eyes on the rocks looming above us.

It was day three of our travels through Ethiopia, and day one had found me, not toasting the New Year poolside in some swanky hotel as planned, but wrapped up in blankets, summoning the energy to cross the room and turn on the electric kettle for a cup of tea. The flu, as it turns out, doesn’t mix well with climbing mountains.

Ahead of us soared the face of the cliffs where 5th century Abuna Yemata Guh, known as the most inaccessible church in the world, hides among the rocks. We were halfway up the hillside that the Gheralta Cluster springs from, and I’d stopped every five minutes, like clockwork, to take a sip of water and stare out across the valley floor. To wait for my breathing to return to normal. Though time-consuming, this is not a bad way to climb. How much do we miss, speeding along trails, staring at the ground as we pick our way over loose stones and sprawling roots? The Tigray region stretched beautiful and stark across the horizon, and the only way to see it was to stop and turn around.

In spite of my reluctance, we pressed on, reaching the face of the cliffs. A group of local men waited with a harness to coax us one by one up the flat stone wall, perhaps two stories high. A small resourceful tree, sprung from a crack in the rocks, served to hold the rope in place while a short, wiry man on the ground pulled in the slack. The harness was optional, rented by our guide from a local shop, but worth the extra money when weighed against our collective lack of rock-climbing skills. We squeezed onto a precarious sloping ledge, waiting for everyone to finish the climb. I did my best to dig my nails into the stone beneath me, half in awe of the view laid out below, half terrified of sliding off the edge. We scrambled over a few rises and boulders, then descended onto a wide flat slab surrounded by walls of hollow stone peaks. In one cave, the elements of a baptism ceremony, in another the skull and bones of a priest peeking out through the crumbling brick that once sealed his tomb.

We climbed again, this time stepping up onto a narrow ledge that wrapped around the face of the cliff, the ground seven hundred feet below. My knees buckled and the hot, dry wind whispered through the valley, emphasizing the drop. Pregnant women make this climb, they told us, to seek blessings, clad in long skirts and scarves. We clung to the rocks and picked our way across the ledge, not daring to look down. Eventually the narrow ledge widened into the mouth of a cave that looked out over the mountains, and a door inside the cave led us into a small room, the church, blanketed by mats and woven carpets. Frescoes depicting saints and apostles stretched across the ceiling. Astoundingly, because of lack of sunlight and water in the cave, they are perfectly preserved.

We spoke briefly with the priest, who had things to attend to in the valley 2,500 below, and then followed him back down the mountain as he floated through the most harrowing sections of the climb as if they were nothing.

That evening, we visited another church, the 10th century Abraha We Atsbeha. This priest came from a long line of others, his father and grandfathers had been priests as far back as he can remember, his son will be, one day, too. He didn’t attend traditional school, his education was purely theological. The 15th and 16th century frescoes, restored after the church was burned in a fire, depict St. George and the dragon. This church was a concession from our guide, we were meant to climb up to another, but the slow pace at Abuja Yemata Guh narrowed our possibilities for the day.

A week later, trekking 13 miles a day through the Simien Mountains, my lungs burned in the altitude, still weighed down by lingering flu. We scrambled up and down trails between 9,000 and 12,000 feet, stopping only to watch the Gelada monkeys play or to drink in the endless and breathtaking views from the mountaintops. Again and again, I paused to catch my breath on the steepest climbs, and ceded carrying rights of my backpack as the two older South African men in our group insisted on letting me climb unhindered by camera lenses and water bottles. It’s embarrassing to be the last one up the mountain, the one everyone else waits for at the top. They were gracious, of course, insisting the rests were welcome to everyone, but that’s little consolation to the part of me that never wants to draw attention to myself, never wants to inconvenience anyone or accept help.

But here’s the thing. When I was thirteen years old, I passed up the opportunity to hike to Machu Picchu, because it looked too hard. I stayed in the city, visiting restaurants and museums, and though I enjoyed the time there, I have regretted that decision for the rest of my life. Not everything in life comes easy. Sometimes it’s best to put aside comfort and listen to the friends coaxing you to jump in. Sometimes you have to put up with a little suffering or reluctantly accept help. On the other side of those uncomfortable moments, though, lie the sorts of views that burn themselves into your memory, that will come back to you on your lowest days and give you faith in your own ability to persevere and reach the top.

So if you must- use the rope, the outstretched hand. Ignore the stubborn pride that wants to finish on its own terms. Just don’t stop moving- at least not for more than a minute or two.

In the introduction to the travel section of my other project, I use the sentence “you can step slowly through these experiences and savor them, or race along the trail at an ever increasing speed, drinking it all in as if there is no tomorrow.”

The latter half of that phrase is derived from a quick one-day trip along the Oregon Coast. Back in 2010, I spent a week in Oregon to photograph the wedding of a friend. She was gracious enough to gift me with one day’s use of her car and a full gas tank after the new couple left for their honeymoon and before my flight, so in this instance there was no tomorrow’s chance to explore.

I started my journey at a beach near Lincoln City, lingering to let the calming roar of the ocean wash over me after a busy weekend.

   The next stop had a two-mile loop hiking trail, which I set out upon at a slow pace. But as I moved through the foggy morning forest, the scenery only increased in beauty. I caught myself at a near jog, trying to finish the trail as quickly as possible in case there were anything ahead along the coast I might miss.

The more I explored, the more beauty I stumbled across. I spent the afternoon driving up the highway, stopping at any hint of trail or beach, and racing through the scenery as quickly as I could manage, breathing deeply, trying to absorb the shouting green and magnitude into my lungs.

I’ve never felt so simultaneously frantic and relaxed, and years later, I still can’t explain the overwhelming sensation that washed over me that day. This next year, I’m going to be spending more time in Oregon for work, and I can’t wait to explore these places more slowly, to savor them and let them sink into my bones.