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37.

I was turning twenty-five in a few days, and it felt like more than just another birthday. Mates toldme twenty-five was the Watershed Age, the moment when many young men and women come toa fork in their personal road. At twenty-five you take a concrete step forward…or else begin toslide backwards. I was ready to move forward. I felt, in many ways, that I’d been bag-flying foryears.

I reminded myself that it ran in the family, that twenty-five had been a big year for many of us.

Granny, to name one. At twenty- five she’d become the sixty- first monarch in the history ofEngland.

So I decided to mark this milestone birthday with a trip.

Botswana again.

The whole gang was there, and in between cake and cocktails they said how different I seemed—again. I had seemed older, harder, after my first combat tour. But now, they said, I seemedmore…grounded.

Odd, I thought. Through flight training…I’ve become more grounded?

No one gave me more praise or love than Teej and Mike. Late one night, however, Mike satme down for a somber heart- to- heart. At their kitchen table he spoke at length about myrelationship with Africa. The time’s come, he said, for that relationship to change. Until then therelationship had been all take, take, take—a fairly typical dynamic for Brits in Africa. But now Ineeded to give back. For years I’d heard him and Teej and others lamenting the crises facing thisplace. Climate change. Poaching. Drought. Fires. I was the only person they knew who had anykind of influence, any kind of global megaphone—the only person who might actually be able todo something.

What can I do, Mike?

Shine a light.