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18 JunGle appetites —Corbett Tiger Reserve, Uttaranchal At last I had shed the cooks and porters, slipped guide and driver to get where I shouldn’t. Leaving the road for that enticing artery of dirt, chance greeting desire. Human world soon mute, I followed this sharper attentiveness, canopy of neem and pine. Elephant dung marked the way. I kicked apart one clay-like brick. Strawy warmth, halo of gnat, inarguable musky perfume. Black-faced langurs swung ahead. When I rousted the sambar buck, elk-like, chestnut-dark, and watched its wide crown disappear, I equally startled. Otherwise, the quiet was exquisite, late afternoon light angled and rich—my three shirts too many layers for temperate winter. What I am saying, even in the dry riverbed, studying a mishmash of deer and boar hooves, elephant tracks deep and large as serving plates, even as I prayed not to find what I sought and found, I felt no fear. My late, heavy lunch, first meat I’d taken in weeks, jostled in my stomach. I wasn’t armed, of course, except with weariness. Nothing threadbare as bravery involved itself. I’m saying that as I crouched before the wide indention of pugmark, recent fossil fine in sand, unmarred between rock, I felt only calm exhilaration, a stupid, fateful surety. Life was grand, absurd. The tiger could have me if it wanted. I wouldn’t embarrass us with resistance. I had delivered myself, my own meal undigested. I apologized to wife, 19 mother, but I’d witnessed worse fates lately. From the spidering crux of an immense banyan, I watched the light move and tried to listen. And not until I had chosen to continue, entered a head-tall blind of grass, blades enveloping, touching, hushing me, did I feel a frisson of panic, sweet trembling bloom, hear the drum and bellows of heart and lungs. All the easy, mournful luck of my life, announcing to the wild. ...

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