EXPLORE | THROUGH THE LENS
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS
BY PETE MULLERPeace
Like a
River
A PHOTOGRAPHER WHO HAS
PLUNGED INTO SOME OF
AFRICA’S MOST TURBULENT
ENVIRONMENTS FINDS
SOLACE WHILE FLY-FISHING
IN KENYA’S LUSH
HIGHLANDS.
IT’S LAST LIGHT IN THE VALLEY, and the sound of
rushing water drowns out all others. I walk the river’s
edge with my dog, Mosi, whose inability to hear
over the cascade makes him nervous. Despite his
impressive size, he trots sheepishly at my heels.
Ostensibly we walk to fish, but really we move at
the urging of naturalists long since passed—of John
Burroughs and John Muir, of Loren Eiseley—and
of my parents, Norman and Paula, who are alive
today but live far from this Kenyan vale. Walk in
the woods, their voices advise, along the banks of
a river where, in the blue end of a day, you may find
the rhythms that elude you. There, among the fish
and the flowers and the forces that bind them, youmight make peace with your worried mind.
I began to venture into the highlands of central
Kenya in 2013 with the hope that its rivers might exert
their transformative power upon me, smoothing my
edges as they have, over time, polished the stones in
their path. I’ve never been free of emotional distress,
but my years of working as a photojournalist in some
of Africa’s most conflict-ridden environments left
additional barbs in me. With time it became hard to
differentiate between the conflicts that raged within
and the ones I witnessed through my lens. Gradually
they became intertwined, and I felt an expanding
sense of tension and discomfort in my core.
Fly-fishing, with its knot-tying, wading, and34 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC