Winter had come and along with its ferocious winds and mountains of ice it had brought a terrible darkness which felt like it had seized my heart and stuffed it inside a brooding closet.

 Darkness was like a thief to me, it stole my wings and as a dreamer I am nothing if I cannot fly.

 I knew this winter seemed abnormally depressing because I hadn’t experienced the season for nearly three years.  Where is the sun? I wanted to know! How does anyone function without it?!?!?!

 I had gotten so use to Africa’s fiery ball of orange and yellow electrifying my every move that I was like a junky, feeling nervous and paranoid, without my energy fix.  I wanted to take a magnifying glass to the shadows and see what was lurking inside them.  Was it depression? Was it some ill and twisted fate waiting to pounce on me? 

 No, Shan. It’s just winter. It’s supposed to get dark.

 I had to keep reminding myself of this, but in truth it was a lie because it wasn’t just the winter that was causing my soul to jerk like a Mexican jumping bean in the night, I was missing my students, my apartment on Urine Alley,  my Sudan.

 I had been in such a damn hurry to leave it on June 20^th that I had gone without even looking back, actually I remember having to make a very conscious effort to not look back because it was too much in that painfully dramatic moment, to acknowledge that deep inside my emotions of steel my heart was sobbing for the loss of a friend I would never see again.

 Don’t look back Shan, don’t look back. 

 So I had kept my gaze locked on the seat in front of me and on my unclear and unsure future.   But I had to, because if my focus wavered, even just a bit, my love for Sudan would have crippled me, left me lost in a blur of tears and trying like a loon on the loose, to stuff its deserts of urine and slime and children of prostitutes and thieves, into the weeping embers of my heart.

 And now it was gone…

 Would I ever see it again?  Would I ever ride on the backseat of a beat up rickshaw, one with plastic hearts that dangled from the windshield with the words ‘BIN LADEN’ plastered on its rear end?  Would I ever here the cool accent of the Sudanese as they spit, rather harshly, the very difficult Arabic sound, ‘kh’, which took me months and months to master?

  If only I’d acted like a proper friend and given it a decent goodbye, if only I’d known how much I would miss it after it was gone, then I would have written Sudan a letter and stuffed it in a bottle, then thrown it into the Nile and on the inside a white crisp paper would read the words that were forever etched on my soul: 

Thank you for the laughter and tears.  Thank you for a healthier perspective.  Thank you for simplicity.  Thank you for calm. Thank you for direction.  Thank you for life.

 Sudan was, without a doubt, my first love.  It was the only thing that had managed to put a lasso around my wild and restless heart.  So was I destined to long for it in the way everyone longs their first love? Maybe…

 But just like a first love, however fantastic the fling, it was and is time to let go of that sweet and unforgettable moment that, however irreplaceable, will never be again. 

I’ve always seen myself as a rock n’ roll chic (thus the shoulder length earrings, edgy tanks and rugged baseball caps that are brimming out of my closet) so my decision to get a scooter—one that set itself from the rest by offering a 150 cc engine and was pink for crying out loud!!—probably came as a shock to know one who knew me.  But it was obvious that everyone else who cruised the conservative streets of my hometown did not know what to think of my pink ride and leather jacket

“I love your bike!,” old grannies would shout to me from their Oldsmobile’s while stopped at a red light.  Younger women would often asked, “where’d you get it?” Little girls would point at me from the backseat of their parents Sedans, no doubt comparing me to their Barbies at home, while the males- both young and old--were always staring.

 As a woman never shy of the spotlight I’d make nice with polite conversation and a pretty smile and off I went, with the engine roaring and hair flowing.  But after less than a month of riding, the rain came and people were staring not because I was the cool girl on the bike but because I was the cold girl on the bike.  Their eyes said: is this girl crazy? Why doesn’t she take cover?

 If they only knew what I was doing and where I was living just four months ago then they’d know exactly how crazy I really am, I’d think to comfort myself.

 But they couldn’t know that my refusal to get a car was because I was hoping to head out on a new adventure in a few years and a car would be an awful expensive burden to get rid of when the time came to depart.  

 Of course, when winter came, I’d have to carpool but for now I was thoroughly enjoying the direct contact with the environment. The tiny ness of my new ride simplified my life with a $2 gas tank and gave me great agility in most tight spaces. 

 “Well, if you’re going to ride in the rain you should at least take a motorcycle class to refine your skills,” my dad suggested, not liking the new risk I was taking one bit. 

 I decided he was probably right and enrolled in a training class that was not what I expected.  First of all there were no cute, colorful scooters to train on! Only hard core Harleys, Hondas and Suzuki’s and they were all manual transmission—something I hadn’t had much practice with! Those in my class, who were a pleasant mix of old, young and non biker bad boy, were just as scared as I was when the time came to straddle our borrowed metal and take it for a spin.

 One lady named Gretchen, who kept stalling the low riding cruiser she was given to practice on, told me she had just bought a Vespa and that it had tipped over on her in the garage.

 “That’s why were here right now,” her husband said from his sparkling blue Suzuki which was exactly like the one I was riding and I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to put it into neutral.

 After several hours of circles and weaves in a University parking lot with our Nazi-ish trainers screaming, “do not look at the ground!!! What’s the matter with you, do you want to be killed??!?!” it was time to practice emergency braking.

 “Am I supposed to push the clutch in and then break? Or do I have to downshift first?” I asked a thirty something young woman who said she had been driving manual her whole life. “You push the clutch in then downshift and then break.” She instructed as we hopped back on our bikes to line up for the last exercise of the day.

 It seemed easy enough but I found myself wondering why anyone would choose a manual over an automatic…I mean really people!

 As my turn came to break on command, I rolled down the pavement and chanted my mantra: clutch, downshift, break, clutch, downshift, break, clutch, downshift...but then my trainer gave me the signal and I panicked: was that the break near my right foot or was that the shift pedal and was first gear up or was it down? I couldn’t get it straight so I decide to do nothing and flew passed my trainer forcing him to leap to the side for safety.    

 "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BREAK ON MY SIGNAL!” Mr. Nazi  shouted vehemenantly in my direction when I finally came to a stop. “WEREN”T YOU LISTENING TO THE INSTRUCTIONS?”

 “I COULDN”T STOP!” I yelled back, feeling mad that he had to be so rude. 

 “THAT IS NO EXCUSE! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO STOP ON MY COMMAND!” He screamed and in wanting to defend myself I decided to blame it on the bike.

 “IT WOULDN”T STOP!” I said pointing to my innocent sparkling Suzuki and then the daggers in Nazi man’s eyes let me know how ridiculous I had just sounded. 

 When class time ended, I left the parking lot feeling exhausted from the intensity I had just endured but realized that over the course of the day I had fallen in love with the feel and sound of the motorcycle.  It was so much different than my scooter, which felt very much like a toy to me now and so when I got home that night I searched the internet for a way to trade it in for a bike with a low riding seat, a Harley Davidson plate and a manual transmission.

I was wet with bubbles when Animal Planet super star, Steve Irwin’s bubbly smile lit up my TV screen.  I figured the tub was in no hurry for a scrub, so I threw down my sponge and plopped in front of the TV excited to watch what looked like a random program highlighting the contributions of my favorite animal rights activist.

 “I love this guy!” I exclaimed to mom in the kitchen who was busy kneading dough.

 “He died!” She said over the buzz of the mixer.

 “What?!?!?!” I shouted back over the buzz, absolutely positive I had not only heard her wrong but that Steve Iriwn was not dead because this untouchable man could not die. 

 When her second response came as hard to hear as the first, I turned my attention to the TV and realized the tribute I was watching wasn’t random at all, rather it was timed to mourn the loss of Steve’s untimely death, which resulted in a sting by a sting ray early that morning.

 I stared at the screen deeply disturbed by what was unfolding before me: flashes of Steve tackling a fierce looking crocodile with his boyish grin bouncing off his carefree golden locks, another flash of him with his kids and trusty sidekick and wife, Terry.  Though I’d never known him personally, he was one of my greatest inspirations. He kept me encouraged and lighthearted during many a lonely night in the harsh Sudan desert when I had very little social life and limited television channels. He was memorizing to watch, his personality was dynamic, his love for life and all things living was captivating, he wore his passion on his sleeve and he gave all that he had to the things that he believed in.  It was his way of living that I wanted to model my own by…and now he was gone.

 I stared at the screen and when the news of his death didn’t register I did circles around the den, kitchen and bathroom sayin to my mom more than a handful of times, “I can’t believe he’s dead.  I just can’t believe this.”  It shook me to the core because his death seemed like such an insult to humanity.  I mean, what did Steve do to deserve this? He had more love in one of his Australian pinkies than most of us have in our whole bodies---and he was dead.  Our world was full of gangsters, murderers, pedophiles—and they were all living their corrupted and filthy little lives and Steve, a man who had dedicated his life to making a difference in the world, was dead?

 I was pissed. I was damn pissed. I was so gosh darn pissed I wanted to scream.   

 Our world was in such a desperate need of heroes these days, and I’m not talking about the kind that wear red capes and leap from tall buildings, I’m talking about the real kind.  The kind that get off their butts and devote their time and energy into the things which they believe in; the kind that still believe in things worth believing in.

 Steve was a real hero.  He was my hero.  He had a light and he held it high. His light said, “This is my passion, this is the thing which I believe in with all my heart and I want to share it with the world.” He was exactly as I wanted to be and knowing that he was rocking in the same world as me gave my life inspiration, hope, joy and direction.

 Surely the Universe knew that men like Steve were few and far between? Surely the Universe knew how badly we needed him? And don’t give me that crap that his example will continue to make a difference even after his death, because you know what? Steve was a good man.  He would have done much more good alive than he will six feet under and he deserved to live.  And for some stupid and naive reason I thought that people like him were protected, that karma/God/Universe...whatever...would recognize his good, that he would be rewarded for it and preserved so that he could continue on sharing his light with the world. 

 I was so hurt, just so bitter and angry and confused...but mostly I was heartbroken.  Hopelessly heartbroken.

 On the way to work that afternoon, I sat next to my dad in the car and wondered if he was at all aware that the world was now short of its Crocodile Hunter and said, “Steve Irwin died today.” My dad’s response was to chuckle in his sarcastic way and then he said, in reference to the animal that finally did him in, “kind of ironic isn’t it?”

 My dad’s response reminded me of a time when I was younger and my cat had been taken to the pound and upon hearing the news I had cried.  “Why are you crying? It’s not a big deal, Shannon,” my dad had said.  I’m an adult now and I know better to respect the things that are a big deal to me, even if they are not to anyone else, so I just kept my mouth shut and looked out at the clear blue sky and marveled at how wrong it felt for the sun to still be shining over the world on the same day that a man as wonderful and good as my hero, Steve Irwin, left it.

 For more information on Steve and his contributions visit his website:  www.crocodilehunter.com