The prairie flowers endure, thunderstorms loom, ants continue their eternal work.
Although the parlor stove went missing a few years back, its delicate, leafy pattern was eager to join the spring rush.
And the miles add up on a pair of dirt red feet.
Only a couple of months ago. The South Atlantic in Namibia. The cold water, the cold air, the African sun. Pebbles like rolled glass. I collected some of these against my better thoughts. The pier with hot chocolate for the KilcherKinder. Wine for me and Constantin, a different form of warmth on a cold day. African winter, not something one believes in. Barefoot in the cold sand, the high surf, tide. Flamingos in flight, their pink bodies, kinked necks, and streaming legs like an afterthought, “Don’t forget us!” Houses, building at the beach’s edge. Too close, too certain. Is there no storm surge, no risk?
This ocean I see daily, the ocean of desert, the ocean of grass, cholla, juniper, and pinyon. It is not lifeless as many think. No more lifeless than the oceans of water. We dismiss too much. The surface belies nothing of what lies underneath. If we can’t see it, does it not exist?
The ocean, power, depth, crashing waves, fluid, flowing, cleansing. What does it know? What does it see? What do we deny?
My mind stalls. The ocean draws me. Always has. Yet I have no more words to express, explain desire, need, floating, held, drifting to the lulling, the rhythmic calm of ocean. Sensory overload via deprivation.
My gear is mostly clean and stored now. A substantive layer of red grit has been rinsed from the bathtub after scrubbing boots, duffel, and backpack. I am getting used to the sun being in the southern sky again. My hands no longer look like worn stone and I seem to have finally lost the sand in my teeth after face-planting on the downslope of the famous red dunes. This was not an easy trip, long days, difficult roads, heat, cold, wind, and dust.
What’s the difference between this and fieldwork in New Mexico?
Space, time. People. Attitudes. Beliefs. Distances, geographic and human. Colors. Textures. The light. Elephants. Hyenas and lions.
My camera stopped working early in the trip. Although disappointed and frustrated by the sudden lack of this visual extension of myself, it gave me permission to see. Instead of looking quickly and then taking photos, I watched the landscape; I observed the animals. I saw more and saw it more viscerally. I picked up my cell phone to take a photo and realized the futility of trying to capture something so distant and obscured, or so intimate and detailed, and put it down again. Slowly shifting away from the thought that poor resolution was better than none.
I have much to process, the photos I did take with my camera and phone, and the images my head holds. These latter are somewhat out of order and are filtered through a light I can’t recreate on a different continent, with colors faded and intimacy lost.
Here are a few landscapes from South Africa and Namibia before the camera quit.
More to come. Stay tuned.
