A Million Years with You by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas Page A

ant heaps all grown over in a tangle with bushes. We climbed the ant heaps and looked around. And we found a tree full of weaverbirds’ nests swinging in the wind but all empty, and we found a shoulder blade, all white, bleached, and dry, of some large antelope. We even saw a little round mouse nest, also empty, hanging from the branch of a thornbush. We walked farther but found no signs of people, so we got back in the vehicles and drove for the rest of the day down a series of vast, long, narrow plains. There we saw the smoke of a veldt fire on the horizon which might have been lit by people, so we left the plain and drove toward it, through heavy, low thornbush, until we reached the fire. We found a way through the wall of flames and found our way to the source, where we looked for a sign of what set the fire, but the burned area is very large and it is hard to be sure. The fire has run on and on and is now far away against the evening sun like the smoke from a train traveling far away. It is very quiet and lonely here. We called for people but there is no answer. We have searched through about 100 square miles of veldt and tomorrow we will search some more.
We slept all night under the frosty moon. We got up from time to time to feed the fire, and when it got light we cooked the remainder of last night’s meat. When we woke we could see our breath, but when the sun came, it suddenly got warmer. We are on a rise of ground and you can literally see for miles. A range of mountains, which are about 13 in number, are far away on one side, and on the other, towards the south, the land falls away and away and away, down and down, much farther than anything I have ever seen before, until all the trees are obscured, on and on, until the horizon looks like the ocean seen from miles away, just a blue line a little darker and hazier than the sky.
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    When we’d camp in the evenings we’d take care of the vehicles, brushing grass seeds out of the radiator screens, topping off the radiators with our precious water, filling the fuel tanks with our precious gasoline, and checking the springs and axles. We’d also pull up grass to make a large, snake-free clearing and on it we’d build our fires.
    Then it would be dark, and the world of the night would open. The night sky looked as it did when
Homo erectus
saw it. There were millions of stars, many more than I’ve ever seen since. Under the trees the darkness was complete until, far away, the moon would lift from the horizon, erase the stars, and fill the world with its pale light. We’d listen for sounds such as a rock striking something as someone cracks a nut for the nutmeat or a bone for the marrow—a sound which in that silent world travels for miles—but we heard no sounds made by people. Instead, we’d hear guinea fowls calling as they flew, one by one, to their roosts in the trees. We’d also hear the predators calling—basically the only animals who vocalize at night. From the enormous, darkened veldt we’d hear a faraway jackal calling, or we’d hear far-apart lions roaring to tell each other where they were, or we’d hear spotted hyenas making the
hahahaha
calls that were known as laughter but really are signals of agitation, usually because the hyenas are upset with each other. I didn’t know that at the time, though. I just listened to their calls with excitement and wonder.
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    After many days of travel, we heard only insects and the wind in the long grass. Unlike the Kalahari antelopes, the predators had to drink. The silence meant that we were far from water.
    We hoped to find a place that the two Bushman men called /Gam. It wasn’t on a map and we had no idea how far we would have to travel to find it. But it was the only possible source of water that we’d heard of. If this was so, and since it was the dry season, we hoped to find not only water but also Bushmen.
    After we had traveled about