Closer Distance

I think one of the things that makes Kenya beautiful to me is the way everything feels close enough to touch, too far to reach.
The din of humanity; the hustling, the busyness --too far to penetrate at times like this:
At times when the moon casts shadows, when the clouds seem to swirl around your fingers, when a mountain 26km away is visible by moonlight.
In these times the rolling hills of acacia scattered savanna seems to hold every depth of vision despite the distance. Its the magical feeling of Aladin soaring on his magic carpet; of Simba chasing his father's image in the clouds. But here it isn't animated; its more alive than I've ever been; its nature.
Its beautiful.

It's not a beauty that can contend with the proud Sierras: their towering spires of bared granite, the sheer might of the earth exposed in the thinned atmosphere of heightened reaches. It can't content with the umoving miles of tall and majestic pines, of noble furs with a stubborn jaw.
No, it is not the breathtaking beauty of California, not the meandering contrast of beauty after beauty as granite turns to oak turns to grape vines turns to sand turns to sea. No, it cannot dare compete with such royalty, but it need not. It is seperate, not ranked. It is the majestic beauty of thousand acre after thousand acre of the unending raw nature.
It has somehow overcome the precepts of man; it has taken us into it. The acacia a day's walk away seems as ready to be felt as the dirt track beneath my feet; the sedated clouds as near as the grass under me. And yet each as far. It is a soft beauty, but fierce. Unmerciful, but kind.
And to my eyes; to the senses that compose me, it is beautiful.