Sorry to all for not posting everyday, or for every chapter in this book I’m reading. Some of the chapters I just can’t figure out what to comment on, plus they are short and I’m really having trouble stopping, I just want to keep at the book because it is so interesting.
One of the fascinating things about reading Roger Tory Peterson’s book “All Things Reconsidered” is the anecdotes he recalls while describing a comparatively pedestrian outing, in this case a carefully guided birding tour of the Serengeti in 1986.
He tells the story of Leslie Brown who in 1954 decides to explore a dry lake bed on foot in search of the breeding grounds of East African flamingos.
“Lake Natron, lying in an alkaline sink of the Great Rift, is about forty-five miles long and twenty miles across. It looks rather like a moonscape, or a scene out of Hell, with four or five pools of open water surrounded by miles of crystalline soda that appears a coconut-icing pink from a distance. Mirages shimmer in the stupefying heat. …
…he had walked a little way out onto the white soda that lined the shore; it was hard and firm – an aircraft could have landed on it. It stretched away, glittering in the sun with blinding whiteness. With the reflected heat striking him in the face, he walked out over the hard soda until it began to give way to pink, slushy water. Although he had gum boots, he tried a pair of mud boards, but because of the viscous mess he found them too difficult to use. He discarded them.
The soda crust was overlaid by a thin layer of pink stinking water, already hot from the sun and scumming with dead locusts that had flown into it. He began to crack through the crust, which grew thinner as the water deepened, and each of his footsteps was marked by a foul-smelling black patch. He crossed the slushy water to a soda flat that looked firmer. It was not flat and hard as was that near shore but had formed polygonal plates with raised edges rather like giant water lily leaves. They had weak spots where he broke through to the mud beneath.
Panting and gasping with the effort, he floundered on and on until he cracked through with both feet. Crawling out on hands and knees, he reeled with fatigue. His gum boots were full of chunks of crystalline soda that were cutting his feet. It was hopeless. Far more exhausted than he knew, he had to retrace the same ground in the hottest hours of the day, and without any spare water. When, after an agonizing struggle, he regained the hard soda, he sat down, took off his gum boots, and had a look at his feet. They gave him an upleasant shock. They were covered with enormous, bright red blood blisters, which, exposed to the air, slowly turned brown, then black.
A seven mile walk over the lava rubble brought him back to camp, where he lay down in a cool stream rushing down the mountainside. He sucked in the fresh water by the gallon while little fish nibbled at his blisters. But he didn’t care.
Next morning, with intense burning pain in his feet, which had turned septic, he faced a forty-five mile drive to Magadi along a rough and twisted track. At Magadi he languished for ten days in the hospital of the soda company, with his feet in bandages. They did not have to be cut off as he had feared, but in the end he had to have skin grafts.”
What I find amazing is that Leslie Brown did this trek alone, with no water, and no real plan. The only excuse I can see for this lack of judgement is the fact the dry lake is at 9,653 feet and he may have been suffering from impared judgement due to lack of oxygen. Combine that with tremendous heat and no water, I could see his judgement could have faltered.
Moral: Be safe when you bird, your trek isn’t always a picnic on the front lawn with pink flamingos.
I created this chart using some software called Vertical Mapper, you can see the posting online 
