
There I was, sitting down for dinner after my first afternoon tracking animals in the Kwara Camp of Botswana, Africa. The thick aroma of what smelled like a mixture of wild animals, along with dung and an unfamiliar earthiness, made me realize I was in a macrocosm of life far removed from the sterile man-made environment I had traveled from 24 hours prior. I couldn't help but wonder if there might be some trace of an olfactory memory encoded in my genes of this land I had left behind hundreds of thousands of years ago. I closed my eyes, inhaled the air deep into my lungs, searching for any remembrance of my past. Nothing. All I felt was hunger after a long bumpy ride through the … [Read more...]