To Big Tuskers and Great Adventure

For a New Orleans artist, leading camels into the Kenyan bush in search of elephants is a family tradition.

- By Alex Beard

The first morning on safari, our small expedition treks 10 miles along a creek, across Kenya's Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. First managed in the 1920s as an immense, colonial ranch, Lewa was converted in the 1960s to a refuge for the last remaining rhinos of Northern Kenya. When cattle moved out, wildlife thrived. Now thick with elephants, rhinos, lions and leopards, it's a gateway to one of the last true stretches of accessible wilderness left in Kenya.

Our ultimate goal is elephant habitat, but this early on we're content to pass dazzles of Grévy's zebra mixed in with reticulated giraffes and bachelor groups of Thomson's gazelle. Lesser kudus scale cliff embankments above us. We're enthralled by the tranquility of walking in nature, constantly scanning for Cape buffalo that could burst from thickets with a snorting charge, or for aggressive black rhinos shading under trees.

We're so occupied looking for the big things, we nearly miss one of the smaller, more dangerous things right under our noses. Tucked up under a fallen tree across our path, a puff adder coils. It is so well camouflaged that our two expert guides pass within inches. Then my 16-year-old son, Landry, spots the snake's flickering tongue and freezes his foot mid-stride. Puff adders are lazy but strike with lightning quickness when disturbed. Their venom can be fatal, and this one is six feet long and fat as a stuffed hockey sock. Landry leaps back, and remembering that it's important to look where you step in the African bush, we gave the adder a wide berth.