01/01/11

It’s funny how it can be a new year and yet it doesn’t feel different. It’s just days rolling into each other, and suddenly the date rolls right through those comfortable numbers 12/31/10, and into 01/01/11 – a binary code of a date that supposedly offers promise and a blank slate and calls out for resolution. Isn’t it funny that yesterday was one year and today a different one? But, numbers aside, what is it that makes this day so different from yesterday?

Confession: I didn’t even stay up til midnight last night. After a day spent hiking up and around a volcano called Longonot, I was collapsed into my tent bed, mesmerized by the dance of fire, at about 10:30. The pulsing beat of the celebrations of normal people was mere background noise to mosquitoes and aching muscles. And then I fell asleep, and awoke an hour later to the clamor of countdowns and firework booms and 2011 (which sounds surprisingly like vuvuzelas...) filtering into my tent. Of course, I also woke up several hours later to the low growl of the hippos that grazed like cows just across the electric fence from our tents.

Anyway. Our camping trip was an adventure chock full of dust and suburn and hiking and long meals around the jiko against a setting of Yellow Fever Trees and lake Naivasha. Deets and pics will come, especially about yesterday’s (last year! 2010!) Longonot journey and this morning’s trek through Hell’s Gate National Park. But right now, I am tried and sore.

So in the mean time, enjoy today. Because it is a new year. Happy 2011.