I remember the suns most vividly. The topography of Zambia constantly changes—there’s rivers and deep woods and fields of tall grass. We go into the trees sloped like overgrown bushes and search for animals hidden in their branches. But the suns—nothing does it justice. The dust particles in the air and the sun reflecting off them create these oversaturated colors—wild blues and rich clouds and suns ripe like egg yolks.

The hotel we stay at is in the center of a nature preserve, so we are folded into the animals’ natural habitat in a surreal, dreamlike eden—elephants that roam the lobby in slow gaits and windows that open toward huge hippos and monkeys that play dress-up with your clothes left carelessly on the front porch. One morning, I leave my sweatshirt on the balcony; the next day, the maids find it laying on the opposite side of the camp, carried away in the monkey’s grasp. We spend afternoons in the middle of an open space enclosed by wide, green hills, the animals moving in a loose loop around us—hedgehogs and antelopes and hippos wading knee-deep in a river. Yet the creature I wanted to see most was the one we hadn’t yet seen—lions.

There’s this picture of me when I was a little girl, when my mom called me Cheetah girl—back before Cheetah Girls was an item. I’m decked from head to toe in cheetah print, from sock fringe to scaves. I’ve always been drawn to big cats—ocelot, panther, leopard—but especially lions. They’re intense predators, yet these very beautiful creatures; it’s this paradoxical mixture. Over the course of the week, we catch glimpses of big cats. Our car drives slowly by a leopard lounging in a tree—and it vanishes in a blink.

On the final night, we beg our guide to let us explore after hours. He’s an old African man with a wrinkled face and a wide, feather headdress. He finally agrees. Our square range rover climbs over the rough terrain and we shiver from the cold air moving over us. During the day, the air spreads hot across the plains, but at night, the darkness sucks away the heat. Our car clambers over the dirt paths and we pull into a clearing.
“Everyone, be quiet,” the guide says. “Be quiet.” He cuts the ignition. He flips on the headlights.

In the sharp crescent of our car headlights in the dark of the clearing, we see a lump of fur at the peak of the hill. He moves slightly, lazily shifts over to his other paw. It is deceiving, this lazy pose; our guide reminds us of this. He has wild stories of people getting courageous and climbing out of the jeep toward a lazy lion—and suddenly the lion changes. Reacts in a nanosecond. Kills in an instant. That instinct is there.

“At the end of the day, they’re still wild animals. And therefore unpredictable.” The guide’s eyes never leave the still lion.

The lion rests his mane on his forepaws. When he moves suddenly. He rises, lifting his head and spine until his body fills to his full stance. He lifts his head and roars.

A roar is unlike any other sound you’ve heard or imagined. It’s not loud enough to pain your ears. It consuming, the way it strikes fear into your bones. The sound is textured, a rich bravado that starts off rumbling and keeps building and before you know it, the deep roar comes up under you and has swallowed you whole. He roars. He begins moving. He lazily saunters toward us, the way people groggily drift out of their beds in the early haze of morning. Everyone has shifted toward the opposite side of the jeep, but I remain where I am, frozen and mesmerized. He moves toward my side of the car, moving in a constant and unbroken pace, until he is ten feet away from me. I turn and look at him. We are face to face, eyes locked.

“Don’t move,” the guide says quietly. “When you interact with a lion, you must be still.” Inside, my limbs are static from adrenaline and exhilarating fear, but I don’t move. I am stone.

Nothing moves. In this moment, it is just the lion and I, staring at each other while everything in the universe is still and silent, holding its breath and watching us. I hear a body shift beside me, but my gaze doesn’t move from the lion’s eyes. I cannot look away because I know that at any second this could change—I know that this is a rare and intense moment, and even a small movement of my hand could change things for me and everyone in this car, one swift lunge and he is in the open frame of this jeep and the breath is gone from our lungs. This moment is one where each second has a weight, where there is somehow intimacy and unpredictability and fear that fills the space of this silence, this stillness. There is something in me that won’t let me look away. Maybe I am caught up, but he is looking back at me. His eyes—they are a wild yellow-green.

We stare at one another. He raises his muzzle slightly, then lifts his head and roars again. I feel the sound sweep under me; it quakes in my bones and spine. He turns his back to our jeep and starts a slow path toward his perch. The driver quickly switches on the ignition, pulls away.

On the way back, the static energy and quiet has built up so much in our bodies that we scream and break the stillness, but the guide is shaken up. “That doesn’t happen,” he tells me. “That doesn’t happen—especially in the middle of the night, when things are so unpredictable. You’re lucky if you even see one far sighting of a lion. But that close of an interaction—the way he stared—“ his voice breaks. “You’re lucky,” he says.

Everything in us and around us is rushing, the air tunneling over us in cold, clear sheets. In the dark, the wild things rove. I look out to my side and it is black—pitch black, so dark you can stretch out your hand and watch the darkness fold over it. But out of the dark and solid shape, our headlights cut sharp arcs of light. Look forward, and in the dark brush, you see them. Hundreds of them, yellow and glinting and waiting in the lights. Eyes, wild, staring back at you in the dark with a curious and unflinching gaze.