The art of patience

A final search for the elusive lynx, or indeed any mammal. It was easy to get up at 4.30am, not so easy to stay awake until 8.30. The weather continued to be inconvenient with no sign of the forecasted cloud and rain. We retraced several of the routes we’d followed over the past 7 days with zero activity, a badger crossed the road, we saw massive muddy paw prints on the tarmac, and a pair of red foxes briefly scampered beside us. We stopped at the Ukrainian border, a blue and yellow pole in touching distance. After which I think I fell asleep.
The breakfast scrambled eggs were garnished with “bear leaves”, garlic leaves.
The blip is our van, the registration number by now indecipherable, and Mark the extraordinary lead guide, looking like an extra from “Gangs of London”, a passionate conservationist scientist, charming, gracious and endlessly patient.
After breakfast a 5 hour schlep to Krakow and an overnight before I catch the Edinburgh flight in the morning. A very early night calls.
One of my favourite films is The Velvet Queen where a French photographer and a French writer hunker down for weeks somewhere in Tibet waiting and hoping to see a glimpse of the snow leopard. For me it’s almost an anti climax when they do eventually see one.
We never found a Eurasian lynx.