'Old friend, I hear what you are saying. I sure wish we were perched around a campfire at the end of a God-forsaken desert track, where others before have turned back. But then again perhaps we are, … just without the campfire': From a letter from an old friend
From an old friend, Africa wanderer
Reminiscence of scents of shared campfires
At the end of forsaken desert tracks
Mellowed voices, mutual quietude
The knowing, belonging, being
Without judgment, without resentment
'Somewhere, sometime ago in the great Kalahari'
I walked away from the campfire, to the edge of the tree island. The vast Kalahari stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions. It was dark but the vastness was palpable. The closest human settlement from me was over 30 km away at the park entrance checkpoint. I was alone, human-alone, but there was no loneliness, only a sense of awe, a feeling of privilege in my aloneness.
The Kalahari night stretches into eternity – not that you can see it – it is an emotion. The stars reflect the idea of eternity – there is surely no place in the world where the stars are brighter than in the central reaches of the vast Kalahari.
And I was standing alone in this emotion, this place.
Coming Soon: At the End of a Forsaken Desert Track