the prospect of dying

my friend and guide, arno matthee, nearly died the other day.  i faced an equally nasty possible outcome many years ago in tanzania...the difference was in elapsed time.

arno, some twenty miles from camp, at sea, off the coast of the congo, flipped a zodiac - a useful but inherently dangerous watercraft because if the wind gets  under its bow, like a sail, it fills with air.  arno, happily, managed to climb aboard the upside down hull and there he sat...drifting out to sea...for a day - 24 hours - getting hungry and thirsty with few, if any, attractive possibilties.  luck intervened and some local fishermen found him and helped right the boat.  by some miracle the engine fired and he was able to make it back to camp.

i was charged by a wounded lion.  it was a brief encounter because a lion moves very quickly - covers a hundred yards in 5 seconds or so - and i shot as it leapt from the long grass covering its seventy yard approach.  fortunately the bullet went home...the great cat fell dead almost at my feet.  the shaking began shortly thereafter.

i'd rather have experienced the latter than the former.