“Touchdown on the Savana” 1
This article is one section from a much longer article about the writer’s trip to study the black rhinoceros in Namibia, Africa. It is a fantastic example of descriptive writing, using vivid verbs, tangible details, and helping the reader establish an emotional response to the scene.
Notice that the margins are extra big. This is so you can mark in the margins where you see each of the three key characteristics of descriptive writing (V-E-T). On the right side, write the characteristic used, then draw a line to the specific spot where you see it within the article. See the example to get started.
Touchdown on the Savanna
My first glimpse of Namibia knocked the wind from my lungs. After 48 hours and six flights, hallucinating mildly from jet lag and malaria pills while the guy behind me busily tapped on his BlackBerry, I looked out the window of the charter plane as it dropped toward a dirt landing strip in the middle of nowhere and saw a big gray thing loping across the sand. It was sort of like seeing a celebrity on the street. Omigosh, that big gray thing loping across the sand looks just like an elephant! Wait, it is an elephant! Then a handful of smaller, brown things chased after it, and with my confidence swelling from my elephant sighting, I blurted out, correctly: "Lions!" Staggering onto the hot tarmac amid the screams of crickets, I steadied myself and deduced: I must be in Namibia now.
We had arrived at Hobatere Lodge on the western edge of Etosha National Park, and before the sun set I’d been shuttled out to the plains to see zebras, springbok, oryx, and warthogs. I realize that in the pantheon of adventure, viewing animals from a vehicle ranks fairly low, but I was rapt nonetheless. In fact, I suggest that if upon hearing a herd of zebras thundering across the land, their gamey musk floating on the breeze, if a person does not feel some deep stirring of wonder and religion, then he lacks a soul.
I might have been pleased to spend a few days beneath the thatched roofs of Hobatere, where at every turn a handsome African in olive kneesocks and a crisp khaki shirt presented a tray of icy orange soda and cold beer. It was like wilderness, with waiters. But that was not my purpose here, and in the morning, with the sound of hornbills banging against the hut windows, we laced our shoes and loaded the camels and got ready to walk.
The expedition had been co-planned by M. Sanjayan, the Nature Conservancy’s 41-year-old lead scientist, a biologist of Sri Lankan birth who now lives in Montana for the fly-fishing. The crew included two more scientists, three media, and two guides: Gary Booth, 47, a garrulous Englishman, and his Spanish girlfriend, Susana Higueras, 45. Rounding out the team were four rhino trackers, local Damara, whose native language popped and clicked with the exotic sounds of the Bushmen.
We set off across the savanna and immediately came upon a zebra skull. Frogs were hopping in the mossy wet gravel of the wash. Wild cucumber sprawled on the dirt and seed pods snapped underfoot. A lone jackal ducked into the knee grass. Rudi found a pile of elephant dung and said, "Ah, the old man’s been here." Everything was promising.
But the seeds of Rudi’s annoyance were sown early. The daily walks, estimated at a dozen miles, were hot dawn-to-dark marches and stretched upwards of 20. This might not have mattered, but we reporters and scientists, 20 or 30 years Rudi’s junior, turned out to be slow hikers. On the first night, a few clicks short of camp, one of the camels spooked and bolted into the night with the laptops and the modem. The big rains had carpeted these plains with belly-high grass whose seeds turned our legs into pincushions, and the abundance of water let the elephants and rhinos lie low in the hollows instead of congregating at the water holes where we could see them. Not that we had much energy for wildlife viewing. When on day two someone pointed out to me a pack of baboons perched on a band of granite, I gazed on through my binos but couldn’t convince the exhausted others even to break stride to have a look. The scientists had blisters and had performed little science. The photographer was bleeding from where his toenail used to be and complained that the light was too harsh. Susana had banged her knee and was hobbling with a stick, and Gary was blinded in one eye by hay fever. As for me, I had a bloody nose and a rash creeping up my calves and understood why backpacking has not gained a foothold in Africa. Everyone was hooked on ibuprofen and Claritin.
Except for Rudi. With a weather-beaten Gallic nose and the leathery face of a legionnaire, he was suited for this terrain. He emerged from his tent each morning at dawn, right as rain, his toothpick legs inserted sockless into calf-high canvas boots with wide tears along the gussets. No hat, no sunglasses, just a short-sleeve safari shirt and a shotgun on his shoulder loaded with four shells. "For the lions," he said. "One up front for noise, two with bird shot, and the fourth with ball bearings to stop him."
Rudi hiked with two military canteens in a canvas rucksack but rarely drank water, instead pouring it into a large, scuffed plastic dog bowl. "Tsotsi, boy, would you like to lighten my load?" he asked one of his parched Dalmatians that trotted at his side. "Drink some water, chap. I’d be most relieved."
As we waded hip-deep through the grass, dragonflies humming overhead and grasshoppers fluttering at our ankles, Rudi identified the plants in Latin, noting that it was too difficult to keep track of their common names in the three European languages—English, German, and Afrikaans—that are spoken in Namibia. We hiked to a creek that Rudi hadn’t seen flow in 19 years. The camels were stunned—it was the first time they’d experienced running water—and they knelt in the stream and attempted to roll over. Rudi held forth on a wide variety of topics, such as the problem with off-road car tourism in his beloved desert: "Southern Africans are naturally lazy bastards. We drive everywhere. We’re spoilt. Most come up here in their Land Rovers and think, It’s the old colony, and we’ll screw it once more for old times. The land gets used for 20 years, and then it’s buggered, and no one wants to come anymore."
Rudi’s short supply of tolerance for us quickly ran dry. On the third day, the cameraman got separated from the group after lunch, and when we all arrived at camp that night, he was not among us. "If he gets back he’ll have no dinner," Rudi announced. "And he can f— off to his tent." He stalked around the campfire barefoot in his field coat and shorts, cursing, sipping single malt from a plastic mug. It was getting dark. We were in lion country and a man was lost. A round of blame-laying ensued, and now Rudi exploded. "I make all the bloody decisions from here, and pity the f—er who steps out of line—I’ll blast him with the bloody shotgun!"
Gary and the trackers headed out in Land Rovers to search for the cameraman, and as the rest of the group sat around the fire, Rudi’s mood lightened. "The thing that really worries me is that we’ll have to hear Gary tell the story," he said, allowing a craggy smile, his eyes twinkling in the firelight, "and we’ll be up all night. When he comes back, Susana, why don’t you poke out his other eye?"
Citation
Sundeen, Mark. "Namibia’s Magnificent Beast." Sept. 2008. National Geographic Adventure. 10 Sept. 2008. National Geographic. <http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/namibia/mark-sundeen-text/1>.