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(The first piece I ever published: a profile of the world’s champion birdwatcher. This appeared in The Idler in 1988.)
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Terry Stevenson lives in the Kenyan Rift Valley. It is low land, near the equator and well into the interior, a formula for dry, choking heat. The soil parches into red dust, and the air, bewildered by sunstroke, wheels it up into dust devils and storms; much of the land ends up in the lake.