Letter Home by Aimee Barnes -- No. 4

>Date: 28 Nov 2002 11:06:11 EST
>From: Aimee E. K. Barnes

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Sorry it has been so long since I last wrote--I have actually been back in Pretoria for about a week, but have not had the time to write an update until just now.

We are currently in the midst of writing a huge group paper, which serves as the "culminating experience" for the Environmental Studies major. The benefits of having 20 people to work on one paper are that each individual only has to research and write a few pages at most. The drawbacks, however, are that you have to somehow figure out how to coordinate the efforts and thoughts of 20 very differently opinionated people into one cohesive paper, all day long, for a week. Tonight we'll be doing our first editing, and we hope to be done with everything by Saturday. On Monday morning we leave for Mussina, where we will have the opportunity to see a full eclipse on the 4th of December.

Before all the mayhem of our group paper, we spent two weeks in the Kalahari Desert. After a number of lectures about the region before our departure (which were designed, I'm convinced, to scare the hell out of us), I was sure the soles of my shoes were going to melt, I was going to get heatstroke, and the whole experience was going to be utterly awful. After the two weeks were over, however, I had decided that the Kalahari was one of my favorite place on earth. I can't explain why using anecdotal stories like I did with our trip to the national parks a few weeks before... so instead I've decided to include portions of journal entries I wrote while we were there to give you an overall feeling of the place/my experiences there... anyway, here goes nothing...

6:07pm November 8th, 2002
I am in a ridiculously good mood at the moment for no apparent reason, which is the best reason of all to be in a good mood in my opinion. Despite a long car ride and tiredness from minimal sleep at the Backpacker last night, I am happier at this very moment than I've been in quite a while. It's ironic, since I was dreading this leg of the trip only a few days ago. I think just being out in the middle of nowhere does wonders for my disposition. Am currently sitting out with Lindsey, Jen, Matt and Meagan doing distracted journal writing, making lists of animals we've seen so far, and taking photos of the sky while we wait for dinner.

10:35am November 13th, 2002
The past two night here in the Kalahari have been dominated by thunderstorms--big, sprawling masses of darkness that roll in over the desert and beat down windy and relentlessly for a few hours until all suddenly ceases and the storm lumbers on as though it were never there at all... except for the rain water which even so is sucked up quickly and hidden away by the sandy red dunes. The Kalahari is known as a place of extremes--extremely beautiful but harsh, and yet, such an extremely fragile and precariously balanced ecosystem. By 8am the heat is extreme, and by 10am it is debilitating. The only respite is the occasional breeze or sun-blocking cloud. The clouds are just one of many of the subtle beauties, with reddish-pink underbellies as the result of reflection from the red-colored dunes below. It is easy to see how people might drive through and miss things like this, and believe that the desert is dead and ugly. But it is not hard to look closely and marvel at the busy colonies of ants, the darting ground squirrels looking nervously for cover, the ominous scorpions lurking under every rock (or so it seems), and suddenly this barren desert which so easily drains people of their will to live becomes a life-giving and life-filled environment which so many animals have adapted perfectly to over millions of years.
Perhaps my favorite thing about the Kalahari so far, though, are the skies. At midday they are a stark, vibrant blue that somehow manages to clash and coordinate simultaneously with the landscape below of ruddy red sand and sagey brush the color of mint chip ice cream in a way that only nature could arrange. During storms, the sky becomes one massive cloud of darkness that bears its soul of life giving water and powerful lightening across the landscape. In evening it becomes one great melting mass of reds, oranges, and bluish purples, and as the crescent moon rises, it becomes at last an endless blackness punctuated by a million diamond stars.

3:47pm November 19th, 2002
We are currently at a grape and date farm--an island of neatly maintained greenery nestles between ruddy mountains which just out of the desert at a 45 degree angle, uprooted from the earth by some mysterious geological event ages ago. Before arriving here we stayed 2 days at Augrabies National Park, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places I think I have ever seen. The park is divided in two by a massive gorge which has been cut away over countless years by pounding waters that now spill over giant waterfalls and tear down riverbeds below. All around are beautiful mountains and desert that goes on until you can't see anything else. This afternoon we got to go kayaking down a portion of the river that runs above the falls. It was an absolute blast...

9:26pm November 20th, 2002
Today we woke up early and packed our tents in record speed for the drive to Witsand, home of the famous roaring white sand dunes... after a difficult scramble up the steep side of a dune, we were perched atop the white sands, and could see everything around us for miles. After wandering and exploring a bit, we found a place where the sand roars. Basically, you get a group of people together and run down the side of the dune, and it releases gases from the sand which come out sounding somwhere between a donkey braying and a deep hypervenilation (sp?). It's one of the more absolutely fascinating oddities of nature I've ever experienced.

Well, kudos to you if you survived reading all that... Happy Thanksgiving to everyone... I'll be home in the States in about a week, so if you're at Dartmouth hope to see you while I'm briefly there between the 6th and 8th of December, and if you're in California hope to see you sometime between the 8th of December and the 4th of January. If you're neither... hope to see you sometime soon. :)

Love,
Aimee