Great Desert Flower of Namibia

Nico, my dear co-pilot,

You told me that she was flying again, but you didn't say that you would join her so soon. You were the great desert flower of Namibia, who managed to thrive in the most inhospitable environment with an inexhaustible supply of smiles and joy. Just as I began to feel stranded in a sea of desiccated Earth, you appeared out of nowhere. The first time I saw you was in the sky--like warm rain, you landed before me and nourished me with your kind, imaginative, and gentle demeanour. Oh Nico, I will never forget the freedom of being in the air with you, soaring over the sands of time, restrictions, intolerance, bureaucracy, and racial tension. You simply treated everyone as a dear friend, regardless of who they were and even when they did not reciprocate your gesture.

I keep flashing back to fragmented memories from Omaruru---from the commonplace task of taking sodas out of the refrigerator and marking our names on the tab sheet to the extraordinary experience of feeling the wind slip over my face as we watched the sun descending under the darkening sky with Brandberg Mountain in the distance. Every time a new one comes, I smile, because for a second, you are reborn to me. Despite my best intentions, this feeling always slips away the more I relive the memory in my mind. And then you slip away... Later, I see a purple aster growing out of the sand or hear an engine roaring overhead, and you are born again. Then, the flower disappears from view and the roaring fades, and you leave once more, like an undulating wave that makes contact only for a precious moment before returning to the sea.

One day, when my wave reaches its crest, it too shall be compelled to return to the source from which it came. Then, the energy that my wave carried will be transferred to the next as it goes out and touches land for that ephemeral time of its own. My understanding of this also comes and goes in waves; I touch it when I see what happened to you not as a death, but as a continuation of the transition that occurs at every moment. Is it not true that you and I are made up solely of non-you and non-me elements?

I will always remember our fabulous adventures above this beautiful planet and I will try my best to follow your example, radiating happiness and joy in my actions without discrimination, like a sun which extends a smile to everything in its path of warm light. It is difficult to feel sad when I am so filled with gratitude for everything that you have given me. Thank you, Nico, for simply being who you were and sharing the wealth of your wisdom with others in every way that you knew how. I will find you again, this time blowing across the crimson sands, continuing to transform them in ways that even you yourself could not have imagined. When I do, I know that I’ll be standing where the sea of red meets the sea of blue.


Fly free, my friend.


Heather

Soaring on Sand

And the days continue to race by in the colours of sand, sea, and sunsets; melancholy, solitude, and wonder, highlighted with soaring moments of joy, lowlighted with structural and situational frustrations. I had another successful day at the dune--the final day, a completion of my basic training. The morning was somewhat uneventful; the wind was oddly absent despite the fact that the sun and heat had come earlier than usual, burning off the fog well before 10 o'clock. I practised front starts, back starts, and ground handling as the other students worked with Mario. I was the last one to leave the dune that day; I had been waiting patiently for my moment with the wind. Mario remarked on how well I had done in spite of the non-favourable weather conditions. He paused for a second and then added:

"But if we don't find these to be the ideal conditions, then I don't know where we will."

Soon after, the wind whispered in my ears and gestured for me to come play. I followed her lead with my glider, lifting her up gently and then began dancing with my brakes, risers, and hips. At one point, a gust came along and knocked me onto my back side. Instead of righting myself up again, I stayed there on the ground in the sand, laying under her as she pulled me forward again and again. I was completely mesmorised by the interaction and it was not until Mario ran over and collapsed my wing with his arms that I realised what was happening --- I was moments away from being swept off and over the towering dune; the wind speed had quickly rose much higher!

"I had to stop you," he told me, out of breath from running. The wind would have carried you away completely had I not."

"Can't you let it?" I pleaded, as my eyes stared off into the eastern skies. I already knew what his answer would be and yet, I nonetheless felt compelled to try. Sehnsucht overcame my entire being and I suddenly only longed to be taken wherever the wind would lead me into the dunes beyond.

The desert as I have seen it both in the Namib-Naukluft National Park and in Swakopmund contains what every desert should---vast, empty space, ephemeral water beds, mirages, heat which scorches the earth, wind which transforms it, and desert flowers which exist in spite of their unforgiving environment, affirming the wonder and beauty of life against a desolate backdrop.

As a desert wanderer, one cannot believe in every distant lake she sees, for the water which sparkles in the reflection of her wide, hopeful eyes could slowly fade away with each approaching step, like a sinister apparition diverting her attention from the sand beneath her feet. She has to understand that she cannot expose herself to the wind at every fleeting whim and that its habits often shift without warning. Behind every mountain made of sand that she climbs sits another, always beckoning to her and concealing behind it still others, ad infinitum. When she glances behind her, she finds that formerly summitted mountains have already changed, still recognisable, at the same time unfamiliar.

She carries on in solitude in the most inhospitable environment, burned by the sun directly overhead, without shade or shelter for refuge. But she holds herself well and with a joyful disposition. Despite illusion after crushing illusion of a water well to replenish her weather-worn spirit, she always manages to find one whenever she truly needs it. She knows this truth in her heart and so is able to tread lightly across the shifting earth free of apprehension or despondency.

She dances in dust devils and always pauses 20 seconds before the sun tucks behind the horizon, admiring the most brilliantly variegated sunsets. She endeavours to befriend all the desert's living creatures. Not all reciprocate her kindness but as the sky grows dark and the air becomes colder, she knows that she's protected. Nowhere else has she ever so clearly and intimately interacted with the forces of this earth, waxing and waning, rising and falling, being and transforming, to the beat of nature's breathing lungs. The desert is empty and yet it contains everything! She knows this and that is why she continues on her journey of discovery, in the hope that one day she will also come to understand her role in it.

Desert Flower

“I didn’t expect you to come back.”

I handed the boy my shopping bag full of groceries including bread, lunch meat, and drinking yogurt.

“Well, I did,” I smiled. “So you told me that you would tell me why you didn’t want to come with me when I returned.”

The boy hesitated.

“You promised,” I insisted.

“I didn’t go with you because I don’t feel comfortable going in those places.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the boy sneaking a peek through the plastic to determine its contents. He smiled shyly. I handed the bag to him, then said goodbye and continued into town.

---
My mind travelled back to the windsock dancing in the wind, alone amongst sand and distant blue waves, which were beginning to whitecap. Each individual strip of fabric was undulating to its own tune, but the collection of movements was all together a tune of its own, beautiful to witness.

As I was interacting with my glider wing, I noticed that when I was listening to, giving, and receiving with the wind, my mind was quiet – I wasn’t thinking! Mario later scolded me for that very point, saying that I missed the objective of the entire lesson and didn’t complete even one of the exercises that he had asked me to do. He asked me in a very frustrated voice what my goal had been out there, in the desert off to the western side where I had wandered, and I tell you now that no matter how hard I try to rack my brain for reasons as to why I did what I did, and forgot what I was supposed to do, I honestly cannot come up with any. I only remember feeling that the wind was speaking to me through the wing and when I genuinely listened, it danced with me. Whenever I became distracted or reverted to an automatic reaction, the wing dropped to the ground.

I was so focused on this interaction that I became oblivious to the direction in which we, the wing and I, were heading, or at least how quickly we were moving there. I remember wondering, “is this something like God?” as my wing filled with air and I responded with the brakes and A-risers.

---

Fleeting interactions with Charles came and went. His communication was irregular and not always clear. I met his family in an outer suburb of Swakop; we had dinner and watched a movie together. Charles was silent most of the time and tended to avoid me. I couldn’t determine whether this perplexing behavior could be attributed to extreme shyness, general apathy, or perhaps even regret towards my presence in his home. In the end, it was I who lost interest in the whole endeavour of meeting with him and getting him to talk. Why should I try to force a situation into a direction it doesn’t want to go?

--

My heart warms when I think of Nico, his wrench which he always carried on him (“because you never know when you’ll need one!”), the flower strapped on the nose of his plane with a :-), the way he always called me Milady, with a bow, our antics in the hangar practising our switches, watching a Namibian sunrise from above. I miss you, Nico. You understand what magic is and how to summon it. You do what you do because it is what you love and what you find to be inspiring. People judge and criticise you because they don’t understand you; their ignorance is illuminated through their ridicule. You, like so many other things I’ve discovered since I’ve been here, should continue to exist—and need to—because you make life beautiful. You make the lifelong daily struggle to find meaning worth it through simple (inter)actions that you may never know so greatly impacted another person. The time I spent with you was a wonderful gift and I will never forget it.

Please, Nico, continue to exist as you do.
Don’t give in and never give up.