Legend: Voortrekker in his later years, with a broken tusk
CHRISTIN WINTER / SHUTTERSTOCK
Squatting on a high rock, the sun was setting, the moon rising. Below me elephants grazed. It was an unexpected moment in my life, and I couldn’t stop staring. Monday morning. Everyone I know was at work, but I was on the rock looking across one of the last known wildernesses on Earth. I was in Namibia, the northern Kunene Region, and luck had risen early. There, below me, a herd. Nicknamed Mama Africa. They weren’t my focus here, just a surprise treat. Elephants are traditionally matriarchal creatures, wandering about as mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts. But I wasn’t looking for the female desert elephant, I’m on the trail of the male. The bull. The largest land mammal in the world.