The Endless Plain

Captivating scenes on a terrestrial ocean.

Photo by author

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

June 3, 2025

[NB: Our journey started last weekend. Previous installments are here, here, here, here, and here.]

Thomas Jefferson requested fossils, bones, and live animals when he sent Lewis and Clark to explore the west. He kept what he received in the parlor at Monticello, hoping it would one day grace a worthy museum in the United States.

Within Jefferson’s lifetime, the precursor to the Smithsonian was founded. In 1816, a group of Washington citizens formed the Colombian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences. Thomas Jefferson was an honorary member.

Growth was slow. But in succeeding decades, specimens, shells, and minerals compounded its collection.

A bequest from British Scientist James Smithson followed a somewhat convoluted path to seed the museum that would bear his name.

In the middle of the 19th century, its distinctive “Castle” adorned the Mall. By the turn of the 20th, the National Zoo opened a few miles away.

The Natural History Museum arose in 1911. To help fill its coffers, another former president offered to gather samples of fossils and fauna.

“Clearly Insane”

Theodore Roosevelt looked and acted like a caricature of himself. The teeth, the glasses, the bombast, the bravado: had he not existed, he couldn’t have been invented. With ample evidence, Mark Twain called him “clearly insane.”

He was a bastion of unbridled energy. Roosevelt rarely rested, and needed no impetus for adventure.

Rumor had it that he read a book before breakfast and gulped a gallon of coffee every day. To relax, he once announced he’d take a month off to do absolutely nothing…except write a biography of Oliver Cromwell.

Which he did.

Predictably, boredom afflicted him when he left office. To stay busy and out of his successor’s way, Roosevelt went to Africa.

Andrew Carnegie funded the voyage, which the Smithsonian sponsored. The ostensible intent was to collect samples for the Natural History Museum. It was successful, bringing back 11,000 specimens for the burgeoning gallery.

Needless to say, the effective founder of the U.S. National Park Service supported the British government creating game reserves from “wilderness” on which indigenous tribes happened to live. Roosevelt was to some extent responsible for creating playgrounds for the rich on two different continents.

Paradoxically, the man who killed over 500 animals on his east African safari condemned “game butchery as being objectionable as any form of wanton cruelty and barbarity”, while castigating protestations against game hunting as “a sign of softness of head, not soundness of heart.”

Unknown Origin

A couple decades later, Ernest Hemingway reached the Serengeti. While here he hunted, fished, and contracted amoebic dysentery. His evacuation and recovery inspired The Snows of Kilamanjaro.

Hemingway returned twenty years later, joined by his fourth wife and burdened by the weight of irredeemable alcoholism. Declared dead on a couple occasions, he twice had the opportunity to read his own obituary while in Tanzania.

Some claim Hemingway introduced the word “safari” as a way to describe what we’ve been doing. Others credit British explorer Richard Burton a century earlier.

Who knows?

Maybe one introduced the word, and the other popularized it. “Safari” is of Swahili descent and Arabic origin, describing a “journey” to seek wild animals in their natural habitat.

For many years, this entailed hunting or (when that became illegal) poaching. Our objective was more modest. We simply hoped to catch a glimpse or take a gander.

Tripartite Composition

We’ve been three days in the Serengeti, a vast savannah covering an area the size of Connecticut. Formed several hundred thousand years ago, till the last couple centuries these prairies were known only to Masai herdsmen and a few hunter-gathers.

The arrival of Arab slave-traders and European resource prospectors revealed the largest number of lions in the world. This attracted hunter tourism among Western adventurers.

It also attracted us.

“Serengeti” is a Masai word meaning “endless plain.” Volcanic ash from the Ngorongoro Highlands formed or influenced these fertile grasslands supporting a wide variety of famous fauna.

While most of the same animals can be found in many parks across east Africa, a few distinctions make this place unique.

Serengeti is home to the largest population of wildebeests and zebras, which form the core of the Great Migration. We’ve watched part of this progression from our exquisite accommodations, which offer boundless vistas over this terrestrial ocean.

The scene is mesmerizing… a smattering of exposed rocks, stand-alone trees, and an unrivaled array of animals amid a tripartite composition of infinite grasslands.

Lions feasting on infinite grasslands (photo by author)

The “short-grass” extends into southern Serengeti from Ngorongoro, The “intermediate” surrounds these to the north and west, and the “long” plains reach further north near Seronera.

In the woodlands and on the savannah are “bunch grasses” growing in clumps or tufts. These have deep roots, rendering them less nutritious and suboptimal for grazing.

“Lawn grasses” are most common in the Serengeti. With shallow roots offering ample nutrients, they are ideal for grazing and the most prevalent grass on the plains.

Sporadic trees are essential to the ecosystem and ornamental to the eye. Like a tornado thru a trailer park, many are toppled by elephants seeking sustenance from the roots. Those the pachyderms pass provide perches for birds, food for hungry giraffes, or camouflaged bases for leopards on the look-out.

Ensemble Cast

A diverse bird population blesses these plains, with over 500 species in the Serengeti. Wildebeest are in abundance, with almost two million ambling annually on their Great Migration.

A few hundred thousand zebra join this circular trek, using the wildebeest as radars for rain... and as guinea pigs willing to test river crossings for lurking crocs.

More ominous animals are here too. The critter that kills the most people in Africa is the hippopotamus, a creature whose closest relative is the whale.

As national animal of Tanzania, the elegant giraffe strides gracefully across the Serengeti stage. An ensemble of baboons, topi, impalas, elephants, klipspringers, and jackals join legions of lions lurking, climbing, or lounging in the grass, on limbs, or atop the rocks of this prodigious park.

Giraffe on the Serengeti (photo by author)

Being notoriously shy, cheetahs and leopards eluded us. But lions lack such reclusive pride. On a couple occasions we found families feasting on carcasses of wildebeest and zebra, or tending to needs of their frisky cubs.

Photos by author

In their wake were the gluttons of the air, wild vultures that precisely perceive the remnants of a kill. Vultures travel almost 150 miles per day and can see a carcass from 6km.

They can’t kill for themselves. Their talons are too weak to lift, so they must wait for future food to die, or to scavenge scraps from satiated lions. Hyenas clean whatever remains.

One species is conspicuously absent on the endless plain. Humans no longer inhabit the Serengeti.

The Masai were pushed out sixty years ago, because poachers disguised themselves in their garb. They were relocated to Ngorongoro, from which they’re again resisting a forced removal.

Rhinoceri are most coveted by the poachers, primarily for their horns. Every seven hours in Africa, someone tries to kill a rhino. The culprits are mostly uneducated locals acting as middle men, usually paid just enough to entice them to kill.

Poachers can get creative, crafting shoes impressing animal prints to disguise their trails. They better hope it works.

Because corruption causes many poachers to be set free, Kenyan law lets them be shot on sight. We’ll bear that in mind as we head north.

As we do we remain receptive to any eventuality, recalling an observation from Denys Finch-Hatton that “the earth was made round, so we wouldn’t see too far down the road.”

JD