I had spent the afternoon walking up a flowing river in the Naukluft Mountains. At times I had to wade thigh high through clear flowing water, whilst ducking and weaving through tunnels of dense reeds and lush vegetation. This can be a bit unnerving as the only audible sound was that of rushing water in the darkness of the reed cocoons. Anything could be watching, waiting, lurking…
Having spent most of the daylight hours making my way upstream and photographing boulders and rushing water, the day had turned decidedly dark and broody by the time I decided to return to the campsite in the evening. High above me on the cliff tops I’d sometimes spot a klipspringer (small antelope) staring down at me, only to magically disappear. All this set to a dramatic glimpse of dark storm cloud in the sky!
About half a kilometre from the campsite I stopped to take the last images of the evening, so that I could still find my way back to camp before impenetrable darkness set in. Crouching low in the water I set about the task of capturing the flowing river as it made the boulders talk, gurgle and whisper. What a strange sight I must have been, bobbing in a flowing stream, wedged between choking vegetation and a towering rock face. Topped by a lightly drizzling sky!
Unseen to me at the time a dark shadow flitted silently from boulder to boulder. It weaved in and out of roots and tree trunks that had been tossed aside by the floodwaters, a vigilant eye constantly trained on me. It finally settled on a big water polished boulder 5 meters from me and silently watched me with its black eyes as I sat crouched, my rear end in the water and my back to the bank. |
