For TIME Senior Writer Lance Morrow and Staff Photographer Neil Leifer, this week's cover story and picture essay on wildlife mark the culmination of seven adventurous weeks in East Africa. The assignment gave Morrow a chance to leave the routines of New York City behind and drift in the expanses of Kenya's plains and mountains, sampling "their freedom and magic spaciousness." Leifer had wanted to return to Kenya since 1984, when he snapped a runner there for TIME's picture preview of Olympic athletes. "Most of my assignments are somewhat predictable," says Leifer. "With animals, you never know."
On the plains Leifer...