Photo Credit - Getty The Telegraph
Photo Credit - Freeman Patterson
'The rising sun makes no sound. As day breaks on the Grand Sand Sea in the Namib Desert, there begins a symphony of the purest silence I've ever heard. The notes played out in hues and the rising sun plays it's soft tones over the early morning dunes. At first the colour is imprecise, delicate. Suddenly, a line of crimson appears, a dramatic major motive lingers in the air. Then like the string section awakening, the lesser dunes pick up the theme and toss it back and forth, in swirls of deepening colour.'
Freeman Patterson
When I was 18, I took a gap year and lived and worked in the barren landscape of South West Africa, (which went through the whole 'Independance' process and was renamed Namibia during my year there.) The country had a profound effect on me. The light was different over there. Namibia is essentially a huge ancient desert. It is estimated to be the oldest desert on our planet.
When I first found out that I had been assigned to live and work in South West Africa as my destination I was disappointed. I had my heart set on Brazil. I had requested to be sent to Brazil. I knew nothing about Namibia. I was irritated to be sent to work in a forgotten corner of the African continent. I did my research and it looked like a huge empty place. I mentally prepared myself for a barren, bare and ugly country.
But as I was to find out ... many plans are in a man's mind, but the Lord orders his steps! Proverbs 19:21 & Psalm 37: 23
By the time I left I had completely changed my mind and realised what the Lord was up to. I was sad to be leaving one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Sossusvlei Photo Credit Julie L
Oryx Photo Credit - Alamy
Someone else who has been touched by this incredible landscape is Freeman Patterson. And his photographs of the land bring me comfort when I want to recall my time there. I also identify so deeply with his understanding of creation. He takes photos and writes words in much the same way that I do. It was his description above that I used as the opening quote in my book about Namibia. It is his statement ... "I feel eternity" that captured my attention.
Photo Credit - Sergio C
Here are his own words about himself ...
" In the broadest sense I photograph Nature, which includes human beings. Growing up in a rural community, I was surrounded by natural things.
Photo Credit - Freeman Patterson
Unlike a child in a totally urban environment, my friends and peer group were not only other children, but also wild and domesticated animals, plants of every sort, brooks and waterfalls, rocks and sand. In winter I listened to the wind-chiming of ice-covered branches, wandered through spring's greening fields, splashed about for minnows in the river, and gathered bouquets of autumn leaves.
Deadvlei Photo Credit - Julien L
In the Namib one sees Earth's bones, the land stripped naked. Then, when the rains come, transformation! However, the seemingly barren, stripped - down landscape of gigantic boulders and rocky sandy veld affects me in a primal way. Every time I return .. I have the overwhelming feeling of coming home ... Here and elsewhere in the southern Namib change occurs so slowly that I often feel this afternoon could have been two million years ago or it could be two million years in the future. In other words, the mountain desert utterly alters my experience of time. In fact, as nowhere else I've ever been on the planet, I "feel" eternity. "
And I have to agree, the huge landscapes, the endless horizons, the gigantic skies at night all combined to make me feel very small. I was treated like an honoured guest at a special viewing of a spectacular masterpiece.
They say that Namibia is the land that God made in His anger. It didn't feel like that to me. It felt majestic and glorious and outside of time. In the words of a couple of fellow explorers ...
"Nature means to us that there is something bigger, it's a constant reminder that we are all part of a greater narrative." The Ryans
Photo Credit - Alamy
"The raw power of being enveloped by the wild is what keeps me coming back." Emanuel Smedbol
One day I really hope I can return to this wonderful country. It currently has a female President and has one of the largest areas of land delegated and protected for nature conservation.
Photo Credit - Alamy
Kolmanskop - an abandoned diamond mining town on the road into Ludertiz.
Photo Credit - Jim Naughten
2 individuals, part of the Herero tribe who wear Victorian attire. The women create huge scarf headpieces. Wearing this 'Western' attire has now become embedded in their cultural identity.
Photo Credit - Freeman Patterson
Sometimes a place creeps up in your affections. A landscape grows on you. I came away and wrote a whole book about my year in Namibia, such was the impact it had on me. My inspiration came from the landscape and the people, the wildlife and the incredible crystal clean light.
“Creation and creativity are inextricably linked.” Freeman Patterson
Thank-you to Freeman Patterson for giving me some images and words to write around. And thank-you to God for overriding my request to go to Brazil and sending me to South West Africa instead.
And thank-you to Namibia for being so unique.
Photo Credit - Robert Reid
'Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no-one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?'
Job 38 : 25-27 The Bible
Roter - Kamm Crater Photo Credit - Getty The Telegraph