Three other members of the team had walked out of camp an hour earlier. We assumed they were already pressing the envelope on the ridge above us. It was now our turn.
Primordial rivers of stone loomed overhead, frozen midflight by some sort of Medusian sorcery. I could feel them leaning toward us, pockmarked and dark.
Joshua was the first Tanzanian we met and the first to give us advice for a successful summit of Mt Kilimanjaro. As he inched the van through the traffic between the airport and our Moshi hotel, he encouraged positivism, patience, and pace.