Neither Here Nor There

Beginning this coming weekend, and for the next three weeks, I’ll be neither Here nor There.

Instead of a Midwestern city or a downeast Maine island, I’ll be in Namibia, a southwestern African country twice the size of California, or in its easterly neighbor, Botswana, which, at 582,000 square kilometers, is the size of France. Instead of Lake Michigan, I’ll find myself beside the South Atlantic Ocean with its cold Benguela current flowing northward from the Cape of Good Hope. Rather than Penobscot Bay, I’ll be traversing the Okavanga Delta created by the nearly 900-mile-long Okavango River -- the "river that never finds the sea” because its spreading, sprawling water is consumed by the Kalahari sands, but, before disappearing, creates a nearly 10,000-square-mile watery maze of lagoons, channels, and small islands.

Rather than walking paved city streets or wooded trails, I’ll explore mammoth coastal dunes, some of which “sing” and “roar.” Also, ancient deserts – the Namib and Kalahari – and, in southern Botswsana, the largest salt pan in the world – Makgadikgadi – which, despite practice, is still maddeningly difficult to pronounce. I’ll be trading in white spruce and red oak for mopane, quiver trees, the prehistoric welwitschia and, hopefully, a few impressive baobobs. Instead of paddling kayaks, we’ll pole the Delta in a mokoro.

Instead of nearby browing white deer, possibly a zebra.

Instead of flashy gold finches, some stunningly multi-hued lilac-breasted rollers.

Crows, yes, but, being pied, look duded up for some avian black-tie event. And it won’t be skunks tearing up my lawn searching for grubs, but, perhaps, not far from our tents, a few elephants needing a mud bath and willing to help create one.

My island backyard nemeses – marauding red and, increasingly, the even harder-to-tolerate gray squirrels – will  metamorphose into troops of ever watchful monkeys and baboons with a penchant for unguarded bowls of fruit or a shiny iPod or ring of keys.

The schools may bear some similarities.Some of the local habitations will not.

Handshakes can speak pretty much the same thing, but in Namibia, four-wheel drive achieves a whole different standard.

 All of which is to say: I’ll be gone. And lucky, again. Very lucky to have another opportunity to travel this part of the world. After which, returning to There and Here, I’ll have more photos, and stories to tell.

All photos taken by the author