A sky of raked coals...
Some say the world will end in fire; | Some say in ice. | From what I've tasted of desire | I hold with those who favor fire.
A couple of photographs from my Norwegian friend, Amé—who will be blogging as soon as she's au fait with the vagaries of Blogger, Hello and all the other tools on which we rely, leave me in no doubt as to the urgency with which I need to acquire a digital camera. Even a three-megapixel starter job would do the trick.
Photographs she's taken here in South Africa and is now sending from Norway are, to put it simply, mind blowing. Reducing these high-resolution images to fit this blog detracts hugely from their impact, but they're stunning nonetheless.
And they go a long way to explaining how a one-time South African girl who grew up on a wine farm in the Worcester Valley—where temperatures can reach 40 degrees Celsius, can live her adult life in a country where the thermometer plummets to -40 degrees. The shot of the dark, ice-covered spur looming to a sky of raked coals is all about land. And I guess, whether one lives in a Mediterranean climate or up near the Arctic Circle, it's the land that charts the path of our lives. As wild, inhospitable or downright foreboding as this stark mountainscape appears, it shares a vibrant, big-sky quality I find only in the heat-shimmering desert spaces of the South African Kgalagadi [772KB], Karoo [937KB], West Coast [494KB] or Richtersveld [1.15MB].
There's a paradoxical freedom to be found in this immense, virtually lifeless, forever-frozen wilderness. The beauty of its emptiness and its obvious extremes lend enormous meaning to any life inhabiting or appreciating its vast spaces—whether without or within.
A road not taken...
But if it had to perish twice, | I think I know enough of hate | To know that for destruction ice | Is also great | And would suffice.
Robert Frost | Fire and Ice
Note: The South African photographs are courtesy of SANParks, which hosts a large gallery.
