I never set out to make a ‘connection’ with Africa’s forests. Chimpanzees forced me to do it. A week tracking them through the jungles of Semliki National Park in Western Uganda during the mid-1990s proved so resoundingly unsuccessful — the chimps hooting with glee each time they gave us the slip — that I spent much of the time crouching on the forest floor, waiting, watching, listening... and falling under the spell of the trees themselves.
When you pit your wits against elusive forest animals, like unhabituated chimps, you inevitably take root in their world.