Dear Tony,

Perhaps it’s not my place to say so, but I wasn’t ready for you to leave. I didn’t know you. I’m not sure whether we would have liked one another. You were a chef extraordinaire, an extravert, a lover of food, an entrepreneur, a trailblazer. I am none of these things.

I didn’t have cable. I knew your face and your name, but barely watched your show. Hunching over a late-night bowl of cereal or lukewarm soup and a glass of boxed wine, I’d blink unsteadily in the lights of the kitchen and then slink back to my keyboard. You would have been disgusted.

But here is what we do have in common: we both write. We both have a passion for new places, an inherent restlessness. And some-ineffable-thing else. Perhaps this is why, when I heard about your death on a bright June morning, a familiar sense of loss washed through me.

I’ve been reading you these past nights, sifting through your blog. Something sang in my blood as I joined you in Tanzania, where I’d been years earlier to visit friends. Your simple, profound questions resonated with me. You wrote about the relationship between the Maasai people and the Serengeti lions. You noted the rarity and beauty of each; how, in order to survive, each must prey upon the livelihood of the other. What should be done? you asked, and concluded: there are no simple answers. Both the lion and the warrior must live. In order for this to happen…