It’s that time of year again – fruit ripens as the summer moves slowly into Autumn. Anything that survived the onslaught of the sun seems to burst into fruit.
Picked on my walk this morning.
I’ve watched this peach tree get it’s blossoms in April – before any leaves, it gets flowers- then it drinks in the sunshine all summer, until the peaches ripen around now. They’re small and many have fallen on the ground and they taste delicious.
Peach tree
The figs are ripe on some trees, not on others. The ones that are ripe dribble sticky juice on to your hand.
Now I’m waiting to see whether any blackberries fatten enough to be worth picking…
We are on the edge of the Namib/ Naukluft National Park. Just a huge expanse of sand, where an amazing amount of wildlife manages to exist.
The Sossusvlei is an area of extraordinary beauty – red dunes blown in strange shapes by the constant wind.
Our guides had explained the difficulty of climbing the famous dune 45 and the access to it, a 4km walk in sandy harsh conditions. Normally a 4km.walk would not phase me but there were 4WD vehicles available to cover this stretch, such is the difficulty of the trek.
I felt I would enjoy being in Desert Lodge,a unique place for the day, rather than slogging up a sand dune. Although it was bordered by the desert, it had a swimming pool and a large bar with tables you could sit at to take advantage of the wifi. I spent a happy day observing the animals coming and going to the waterholes. Our accommodation was top class. It was newly-built chalets with verandahs facing the desert. The front part of the chalets had two beds, then a wall behind with openings on both sides, with access to the bathroom, toilet and clothes hanging space.
My room mate, enjoying the peace of our environment. Oryx at the water holeSculpture of the Quiver TreeCamel Thorn Tree with close up of massive seed pods. These allow the seed pods to survive in drought conditions, until the rain causes the casing around it to disintegrate, thus having a good chance of survival.
Eventually, the group returned. They were all exhausted and at least one of the group was ill from the heat. No one climbed dune 45.
We were here from the end of October to mid November, which is moving towards high summer. The temperature reaches 50′ C in December and the rain starts to fall. We were witnessing Southern Africa at the end of a very dry spell. As we moved up towards Zimbabwe, we saw the first of the rains starting, but that was not for another two weeks.
Our guides cooked us a delicious dinner. Next morning, I took a walk up the avenue- about a mile- so that I could loosen out my calf muscles which had begun to tighten up with all the sitting on the bus.
I had a great view of some buffalo that had come to drink at the waterholes. amazing powers of survival. I felt myself amazed at how living things adapted to nature. Coming from a country where we have almost continuous rain, this seemed like a miracle to me. We were to spend another week in this extraordinary Country of Namibia, travelling next to the coast and the vast expanses of beaches that dwarf any coastline in Europe.
Visiting my friend in the country before all this quarantine began, I took myself off to a midland Forest for an extended walk -( extended because I couldn’t find my way back to my car). My mind was searching for nature and fresh air. What used to be called a walk in the woods is now known as ‘Forest bathing’ becasue of the infusion of fresh air from the oxygen released from the trees.
It made me remember that swimming in the sea is now called ‘Nature Bathing’ or ‘Wild Swimming’ or something. While my mother made sure I learned to swim in a pool, she refused all her life to immerse herself in water that had chlorine in it. Taking the plunge in the sea was a regular thing for us and the best way to ‘get down ‘ in the icy water was debated hotly (forgive the pun) within the family.
Halfway through my walk, I felt the ‘call of nature’ – what would we do without euphemisms? , and it made me think how strange it was that noone had given the obeying of that call ‘en plein air’ a gritty, hipster title. ‘Wild Peeing’ comes to mind. Surely the freeing experience of hunkering down among the vegetation and making sure the flow does not go downhill and wet your feet deserves some lofty title., some daredevil, living on the edge descriptive catchphrase?
The phrase ‘ Keep Nicks’ was a well worn in our house among the females. The person with that job had to warn the person peeing that someone was coming and to hurry up. Why is it that such jolly traditions and activities have not been romanticised into a desirable, coming of age experience?
In days gone by, the back field outside a pub was the Lavatory or ‘Wild Peeiing’ location and as a gesture to the rare female who was allowed a glass of lemonade, the location was ‘Where the nettles were cut down’ as a gallant and gentlemanly gesture to the needs of female anatomies.
I digress. I want to share with you what I saw as well as what I thought about on my lengthy perambulation that day. For the moment, think Fallen Branches, Beech seeds with lofty ambitions and three separate encounters with dogs, each encounter as diverse as the dogs themselves. These adventures, as well as the chat I had with a horse or ‘Equine Interaction’ in modern speak will be developed and laid out in my next blog.
Until then, we all will be no more than 2km from a lavatory so I expect no immediate break through in the eulogising of ‘ Wild Peeing’.
AH SURE AZURE 