We burned my shirt in a campfire at the base of Namibia's highest mountain and scrambled up great mounds of refrigerator sized red boulders to look for desert elephants in the pale grey moonlight. The mountains erupt from the flat dustlands with a breathtaking suddenness. Horizontal, then vertical. White, then red. Rhinos, then meerkats.
Sleep came faster than expected the next night at Spitzkoppe, cocooned in our sleeping bags high on a flat rock, open under the full moon, exposed to a steady desert wind. When I returned from a midnight pee I saw a sleeping bag in a tree in the desert below. Who's sleeping there I wondered. Then I saw my empty camping mattress.
No comments:
Post a Comment