In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, East Africa’s Maasai warriors were so feared that Arab slave traders reportedly paid the tribe tribute for safe passage around their territory. The Maasai raided neighboring tribes for cattle, and even when the British arrived the Queen’s army chose negotiation over confrontation.

Gradually, however, disease and internecine strife reduced the tribe’s strength; the Maasai were forced to give up their nomadic pastoral lifestyle, and with it their militance. The traditional long spear, or imperi, survived, but the o-long—the magnificent buffalo-hide war shield, with its intricate sirata designs revealing the carrier’s background and status—slowly disappeared, as they rotted away in the corners of huts or were sold off as souvenirs. By the late twentieth century few young Maasai had seen one, and the knowledge to make them had nearly vanished.

That was not acceptable to a few Maasai leaders in Kenya’s South Rift Valley, who were determined to preserve the knowledge before it disappeared entirely. Their inquiries led to two elders: Tonkei ole Rimpaine and Karinte ole Manka, both former shield carriers, who suggested that, rather than simply write down the process, why not actually construct one or more using traditional materials (rawhide and wood), construction techniques, and paints made from ochre, charcoal, and blood to form the symbolic designs.

Roseann and Jonathan Hanson raised funds to support the weeklong work sessions, and recorded the process in images, words, and video, which they will share in depth in Exploration Quarterly.

RESOURCES

Photography and videography equipment:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II;  24-10mm f/4 L IS; 300mm f/4 L; 70-200mm f/4 L

Vehicles:

Land Rover Defender (300 TDi turbodiesel) and Toyota Hilux with camper shell

Into the Arctic:

Overlanding Alaska’s Dalton Highway

Farthest North: the Dalton Highway, or Haul Road, is a holy grail for overlanders, the North American road which will take you all the way to 70º latitude on the Arctic Ocean. Built in 1974 to bring support trucks to the oil refineries at Deadhorse, Alaska, its 414 unpaved miles, open year-round, were fraught with dangerous mud, landslides, white-outs, fog, and avalanches.

Today some 25% of the road is paved, yet there remains much hyperbole you may have seen on shows such as Ice Road Truckers. But serious accidents are rare—there have been just eight fatalities on the Dalton since 2008. Your route to work is probably deadlier.

Why, then, undertake the drive if not for death-defying heroics? Simple: No other road in the U.S.—and in fact few in the world aside from the Dalton’s Canadian sister route, the Dempster—traverses so much astounding scenery and affords views of so much wildlife. Forgive the hacks who refer to Alaska’s North Slope as “America’s Serengeti.” It’s a banal but entirely justifiable comparison.

We fell in in love with the Far North in 1994 when we kayaked down Canada’s Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean, and we wanted to re-acquaint ourselves with the arctic tundra and its flora and fauna. However, our original plan to drive our HZJ75 Land Cruiser from Tucson to Alaska was stymied by the continued COVID closure of the Canadian border. So we decided on a different strategy. We booked airline tickets to Fairbanks, and assembled a lightweight camping kit that fit in a single duffel bag. We scheduled our trip for late August/early September, to miss both most tourists and most mosquitoes, and rented a late-model Chevrolet Suburban 4-wheel-drive. Then we headed north.

Join Roseann and Jonathan on an exploration of Alaska’s Arctic region, including images, video, and field sketches and maps from Roseann’s field journal in a future edition of Exploration Quarterly.

RESOURCES

Photography and videography equipment:

Sony Alpha 9 camera, 24-105mm Sony G FE lens, Sony G FE 12-24mm lens

Vehicle:

2021 Chevrolet Suburban 4WD, rented in Fairbanks, Alaska

Antarctic Tragedy Unrolled

On a stitched-in rectangle of smudged white muslin was a complete, hand-drawn pictorial record of Robert Falcon Scott’s disastrous trek to the South Pole in 1911—including locations filled in after his remains and those of his four companions were located months after their deaths, as well as a clue to the seemingly insignificant decision that spelled their doom.

Learn the story behind the map and Scott’s tragic end in Exploration Quarterly.