But wasn't that progress too, that the elephants were killed off like the mastodon and giant rhino before them, like all other wildlife and wild places? 'We can't stop time,' MacAdam said. 'But you can change the way it goes,' Nehemiah insisted.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Africa Change Conservation Elephants Progress Rhinos Stop Time The Last Savanna Wild Places Wildlife

A camel brayed columns from the rondavels, new sunlight struck the savage earth.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Animals Camel Earth Nature Sunlight The Last Savanna

The breeze across the desert as the light died was so sweet she could almost drink it.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Breeze Desert Died Drink Light Nature Sunset Sweet The Last Savanna

Long before the stars died the birds began to sing - cool rippling doves, loud cheery starlings, the long lilting trills of warblers and thrushes.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Africa Birds Cool Doves Dusk Loud Nature Savanna Sing Starlings Stars Sunset The Last Savanna

Faraway a leopard barked that high, dissatisfied deep roar it cuts off so sharply, as if its annoyance is too great to express, can only be appeased.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Animals Annoyance Appease Bark Cats Express Leopard Nature Roar Sharp The Last Savanna Wildlife

Water was how the desert would bring everyone together. The antelope's daily prayer, weighing the mortal need of water with the mortal danger of obtaining it.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Afica Animals Antelope Prayer Survival The Last Savanna Water Hole

I have spent hours and hours watching elephants, and to come to understand what emotional creatures they are...it's not just a species facing extinction, it's massive individual suffering.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Conservation Creatures Elephants Emotional Extinction Species Suffering The Last Savanna Wildlife

...He sat back on his heels and watched the stars one by one cut their way through onrushing darkness, till all was reversed, day was night, and the blackness glittered with all the desert's sands, each a tiny flame beyond the bounds of time.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Africa Black Darkness Day Desert Flames Glitter Night Planetary Sand Sky Solar System Stars The Last Savanna Time

Already this sun was pouring its wrath into the blue Indian ocean where swordfish and marlin cruised like silver-blue attenuated warheads in their green-gold depths...

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Africa Blue Depths Indian Ocean Marlin Oceans Sun Swordfish The Last Savanna Water

The eastern savanna shifted from charcoal to deep purple, to the west a feverish orange moon sank into the Kiambu Hills.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Africa Charcoal Dawn Kiambu Hills Moon Orange Purple Savanna Sunrise The Last Savanna West

Inside her head or out in the desert was the same, and the air inside her throat was very dry to keep from crying and her neck sore from forcing herself not to look down, not to look back.

~ Mike Bond

Mike Bond Air Crying Desert Dry Inspirational Quotes Look Back Look Down The Last Savanna Throat