THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO: ON FOOT ACROSS EAST AFRICA

The Shadow of Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa

by Rick Ridgeway

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A trek in the company of the great predators.

Tim Cahill once wrote that "there was a time for all of us when we wanted to be Rick Ridgeway." Explorer, adventurer, entrepreneur, Ridgeway takes readers on an incredible journey. On foot for a month, from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, through the plains of Tsavo, to the sea, he offers a rare ground's-eye view of east Africa as it is today and how it once was before the incursion of European civilization. Ridgeway takes a hard look at the possible future facing this once-pristine landscape, its magnificent animals, and its indigenous inhabitants.

Accompanied by memorable characters, such as Danny and Bongo Woodley, sons of the legendary Tsavo warden Bill Woodley; renowned elephant biologist Joyce Poole; and the descendants of the Waliangulu--the "People of the Long Bow"--the last great hunters of the region, Ridgeway encounters lions, rhinos, and elephants in this wonderful adventure on the trail, and through interviews with luminaries such as Richard Leakey, comes face-to-face with the legacy of colonialism, in both cultural and ecological terms, here in the cradle of life.

Amazon.com Review
Known for such feats as being the first climber to reach the summit of K2 without bottled oxygen, climbing Antarctica's highest mountain, and leading a team to the top of a formidable 2,000-foot granite tower in the most remote corner of the Amazon's Orinoco jungle, Rick Ridgeway, in his latest book, takes a walk. Of course, it's no ordinary stroll. Accompanied by park officers, Ridgeway treks unprotected among lions and elephants, rhinos and oryxes.

The Shadow of Kilimanjaro is as much a search for answers to an adventurer's most soul-searching questions as an account of a thrilling journey. In the introduction Ridgeway writes,

Henry David Thoreau did not write that in wilderness is the preservation of the world, as he is oft misquoted, but that "In wildness is the preservation of the world." There is a difference, and it is significant. A wildness is intact. In wildness, all the original pieces are there. My own backyard mountains in California, from the Coastal Range through the Sierras, are in many places wilderness, but none of it is wildness because the grizzly is gone. We may have the grizzly on the state flag; having it there, however, is not a celebration of our heritage but a burlesque of what we have done to the most noble patriarch ever to walk the land.