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So interesting, thanks for letting us in in your thoughts. Your thinking makes me think too - about the long "recovery" from the colonization of Africa in the 19th and 20th Centuries. And why wouldn't the indigenous populations have a changed view on how to use the land once the Europeans left it...and who is right, I wonder?

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I mean ... in the end, I think this is what ended up getting me the most hooked about safaris, maybe even more than the animals? Or maybe it was the combination of everything -- the way safaris bring together this totally tangled history, and mixture of peoples, and science, and conservation, and all the anxieties about the planet, and then also at the same time, suddenly there you'll be with an elephant, munching quietly. And so there's also there's a great peacefulness there too. Thanks for coming along as I explore it.

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Thank you for that illuminating read. Everything is more complicated than we realize...

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So true. I mean, even with Shenandoah National Park there's *still* a lot of bitterness from the people whose land got claimed to make the park. Which isn't to say it shouldn't have happened but just ... yeah, maybe I'm slow on the uptake, but I feel like this whole "wilderness" thing is a lot more complicated than we're generally given to believe.

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