Back in high school in North Carolina, I went on a little hiking and camping trip with some friends. We walked through poison ivy along a trickle of a stream. We built a fire and set up camp, drinking orange soda and eating GORP for dinner. As night fell, we took turns reading Hemingway’s “Snows of Kilimanjaro” by flashlight. It could have resembled a scene from “Stand By Me”. Nearly 15 years later, I was on a Lufthansa flight bound for the town of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I was sent there to shoot a travel diary for J. Crew, which I did. But I also spent a lot of running around on safari and visiting Maasai villages, just out of pure curiosity. On my last night at the safari camp, the owner’s son and I sat out in the savannah photographing acacia trees against the starriest sky and listening to the whoop of nearby hyenas. Even though the circumstances of my life has changed enough that I could even find myself in Africa, I felt like the same kid sitting in the bushes trying to take in the world around me.