Discovering the Johnson’s 1924 camp

After dinner, we take a walk to the forest or over to the cliff, or if we are very tired we sit on the veranda and watch night fall over the Lake. There is always life at the Lake, whatever the hour, and in the evening birds in great numbers are usually leaving the water to go to roost. They give the air a constant movement and color. Night comes swiftly and the animal calls increase until we have a tremendous symphony of jungle sound all about us. It throbs through us and we seem to become a part of it. I can feel my heart keeping the beat of it, and its rhythm lulls us to sleep.

Below our veranda is a natural clearing with great brown olive trees standing about. We have named this Paradise Park. Practically all the trees have had their bark rubbed off by elephants. And since they are bare for as high as fifty feet, I suppose that elephants have scratched their backs here for fifty to a hundred years.

–Osa Johnson