The other side of the desk.

Every year I try to spend a stretch of days far from a screen. This past February it was the bushveld north-west of the Waterberg, in Limpopo — plains game, on foot, in the early light.

The point isn't the trophy. It's the patience the country asks of you: the slow stalk, the wind read again and again, the long wait for an honest shot. Mostly broadside, inside two hundred yards, where the shot is clean and the animal drops without suffering — and only when the angle and range make it right. A couple were taken a little further out, front-on, and only because everything lined up.

You come back quieter, and a little more grateful. That patience and respect travel back to the desk with me.