Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
#1A’s “landscape view” image was taken at 11. 56 am on 22 November 2022, when I was standing close to the rim of Sesriem Canyon.
#1B’s “much closer view” was taken four minutes later, when I was inside the canyon, heading down to the then mostly-dry bed of its “creator”, the Tsauchab – a river that last managed to reach the Atlantic Ocean many thousands of years ago.
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Whether or not you are taking photographs – and wherever you happen to be – it is always worthwhile, often, to change your field of view from narrow to wide, and to shift your focus from somewhere/something near to somewhere/something distant…and vice-versa.
Doing so will help your eyes to work better, for longer…and you will enjoy many wonderful sights that you would have missed, had your focus and field of view remained “fixed”.
(it is also a good idea – most especially if you enjoy wildlife encounters – to turn around and look behind you, frequently …but “turning around” is not this series’ concern)
The series begins in the Namib, the world’s oldest desert…
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There really is no other accommodation within this section of Namibia’s Skeleton Coast.
Shipwreck Lodge has just ten cabins; eight accommodate two people, the other two cater for four guests.
So, 24 guests is a “full house”!
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This is the current series’ final trio of images taken from the bed of the (mostly dry-surfaced, but intermittently greened/vegetated) Hoarusib.
Only on very infrequent occasions is flowing water readily evident; usually, parts of the riverbed double as road.
All three photos were taken within a single “window” of less than two minutes, as I walked a very short distance, and pointed my 400mm lens north/ish.
At this point the Hoarusib’s source is circa 280 kilometres further inland.
The Atlantic’s “skeleton coast” is less than 20 kilometres distant.
Here, I think, is one of “our” planet’s singular places.
Arguably, no other (relatively) accessible location so richly deserves to be described as “pristine wilderness”…
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Every word in today’s subtitle applies to the Hoarusib River, shortly before it sometimes flows into the Atlantic.
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Umpteen times, during our several hours spent in and around the lower reaches of the Hoarusib River, I was amazed and awestruck.
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All three images involve the same dune, as viewed from the bed of the Hoarusib – the river the dune was “meeting”, at 9.06/9.07 am on 14 November 2022.
I shot all three within circa 90 seconds, with a 400 mm lens.
You will see more within these images if you enlarge them /zoom in on their details.
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In this part of the Namib – its western edge, adjacent to the Atlantic’s “skeleton coast” – its dunes are often generally-lighter in colour than are those further inland and further south.
Here, also, variations in colour and texture are more readily-evident/common on the dunes’ surfaces.
Their “sands” are not all of the same kind, colour and density; accordingly, winds “sift”, “sort” and shift them, differentially.
The results are oft-exquisite: “sand mandalas”, sans any human role in their creation.
I especially love what happens when shifting sands meet rocks and/or riverbeds; they, too, are far from “uniform”.
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