head in the clouds

In Patagonia
the sky embraces
the pale land still cool to the touch
after last winter, which left the pampas grass brittle thin and the eagles fat
now they can see their prey for miles and miles

This continent is so narrow here
the two oceans could talk to each other
still, they do not
the cold deep Pacific sings like a fish
but the warm shallow Atlantic
busy with its orcas and seals and whales
does not even listen

Between the two
much happens here
such as the Andes
packed with deep snows and trimmed with ice crystals

such as the endless flatness of nothing
but also sheep and horses and cows
(not to mention the guanacos and foxes and pumas)
warmly furred and walking day after day into the wind
which seldom quits

But the most reliable are clouds

I wake before dawn and smell the sky
and they all come in, rushing over the steppe
turning somersaults as they go
and twisting into spires and bright hills of deep-tinted vapors
like me, they are a bit crazy, too

Then the sunlight finds its way into their folds
so they can glow
and if I stick my head in the clouds
the morning will come and sit in my lap
and fill me with amazement

But if I move
I will also see a dead guanaco trapped in a barbed wire fence
its strong body caught in a mid-leap not high enough
to clear the obstacle we erected across its wild trail
and all over this land

And I may notice bright skeletons, scattered like puzzles on gravel bars
and wonder where are the bones of those
who disappeared in Argentina when the junta used to roar
or those who perished in Chile
when old man Pinochet killed and killed
and inflicted sorrows which may never end.

And I see roadside shrines erected for those who died after their cars rolled
or slid off the pavement and crashed
does not matter how it happened because it already did
still wet with tears of those who kept on living
I see their pain caught in plastic flowers
chipped vases
and weathered plaques swinging in the wind.

This is an empty and magnificent land where the living are few
and I seem to see the traces of the dead wherever I look.
I do not want to see them
but they are there, unmoved and omnipresent.

Now, speaking of lesser sorrows which end quickly
the other day Dr.Rios of Puerto Natales thought he found something surprising
right in the middle of my body
and furrowed his brow in concerned

But I should have told him it was nothing to worry about
just a condor's egg
big and round and held safe from all this wind
and I should have told him I was all well

But what about the egg, this egg, he would say, and insist I told him the truth

You know, there are condors here, slicing the peaks in half with their gliding wings
and who knows what else they do in Patagonia
when no one is watching?


©Yva Momatiuk

the persistence of memory

There is a mountain lake high in the Rockies where aspen trees spill their reflections across the surface, and if the October breeze jumps over the surrounding peaks the reflections would keep dancing until your heart spins. John is already waiting for them on a high bank of the lake while I, far more impatient, pace the shore, as if moving could snag the magic and spread it over the water. "Got any good snaps?" asks a trout fisherman as we pass each other on a narrow trail.  "No," I tell him, and it is true: ever since morning I have been trying to find a spot, the angle and the moment when... how did he say it? a good snap could happen. But magic has its own hidden agenda and tells me nothing. 

I walk among tall aspen trees, stare up their feathery golden crowns and touch the smooth skin of their bark. Still -- nothing. Instead, I see every obstacle: the profusion of their dead black twigs, the cloud invading the clear blue of the sky, and the unforgiving harsh light which sucks brilliant colors from the leaves. I am coughing, too: a persistent respiratory bug has settled on my bronchial branches and sits there like a dark bird straight from hell. 

Hours trickle by and I think I've had it. No luck, and the sun is dipping behind another cloud. Better find our camper and start cooking. End this fruitless day. Wave my white flag and surrender. Then I round a corner of the lake where a low dam keeps the water from tumbling down the valley. And there, just past some dead leaves cruising in a small eddy full of dirty foam, there are reflections of tall aspen trunks broken by the evening breeze, dancing. They expand like elongated balloons and shrink into fine lines. They bend and twist. I only work with stills, yet so much is happening in their movements. The golden hues of their leaves are dancing, too, and I suddenly think about Salvador Dali's painting "Swans Reflecting Elephants" where the reflecting swans turn bare tree trunks into elephants and the Catalonian landscape behind them goes afire.

What elephants? What swans? Here in Colorado, on 10.000 feet? But the persistence of memory holds. I am suddenly looking at the tips of my patent leather shoes and the elevator floor when the door folds open and Dali walks in first, with Gala, his wife and muse, following. There are only three of us in this small elevator of Gallery of Modern Art, at 2 Columbus Circle in New York City and the year is, I think, 1967. The painter and his wife are both small and stand very still, dressed in conservative dark clothes, while my mini skirt suddenly feels very short. We do not speak but I quickly look at his eyes, dark and alert, and kill my urge to touch the tips of his upturned mustaches. Then it all fades, and I am back at my mountain lake, with white aspen trunks dancing among small waves.  ©Yva Momatiuk

fall of Babylon

We emerge from the ranks of rocky hills dressed in bright spring wildflowers the way a night sky may be studded with stars well after midnight. Sea fog rises and falls, and the Atlantic coast of western South Africa is still invisible, but we can see mounds of tailings stretching for miles. A mine. We poke around a seemingly empty building -- a guard station? -- until two uniformed security guys show up. Yes, a mine. Diamonds. And another company town, hushed against the ground, barely lit, subdued. Miraculously, the guys let us stay in the mine's parking lot and spend the night.

"Do you live in Alabama?" one of them wants to know.  I tell him no, and he sights: "Alabama..." "Have you been there?" I ask. "No," he says, "but I watched a TV show. From Alabama. I liked it." 

We park, and before we cook our nightly soup we have visitors. Two tiny owls perch in the tree above our camper and then screech their way to the nearest roof and sit there, little hunchbacks with pointed Leonard Nimoy's Vulcan ears. The fog eats the land, traps the day's warmth, and holds it till the daylight returns many hours later. We roll on to the coast.  

Hondeklipbaai. What is this collection of dwellings held together by tin and old paint, and a few better cabins with blue trims? The place seems to speak of little money and much struggle to hold on. Is it a fishing village? Surely not, what with its piss-poor harbor, barely protected by a few coastal rocks and smacked hard by every wave which happens to show up. A vacation spot? Again, not with these shanty-flavored outhouses, two deserted campgrounds and bumpy gravel roads ending mostly nowhere, even though the community --
with tiny patches of gardens and no trash anywhere -- is not unloved. 

But we are wrong. A man we ask says it is both, and more: it is also a mecca for men diving for diamonds. Does he fish? Yes, for lobster, but the government makes it harder than ever by cutting fishing quotas to the bone and allowing big boat boys to have their heyday. Does he dive for diamonds? Yes. How deep? Down to 18 meters. Dry suit? No. But the sea is cold, we say, and suddenly understand the wet suit he obviously uses is not his choice: it is what he can afford.  

We need drinking water, so I pass the harbor with its diamond diving boat and several bobbing skiffs, and head for a funky coffee nook, one of the few establishments in town. The owner is blond and very helpful. She does not have much water to spare but will let me have some, except I may not like it. Is it bad? I ask. Well, it is brack, she says, and some folks get sick from it. She has a small filter she uses but I have been already battling my African intestinal unrest three times and will skip her brackish water unless we run totally dry. 

Her tiny open kitchen is crammed with paintings. Yes, she paints, and the whole dusty outdoor gallery is hers and her husband's. We 
talk. I feel my brain slipping into my old "just listen" journalistic mode as easily as my feet slide into my old hiking boots. Her name is Madelaine but she did not like being called "Mad" and added a "z' to the end: Madz. Madz the artist, from Hondeklipbaai, South Africa.
I take her picture . "Should I hold a brush?" she asks, and I say yes. Then John and I eat her breakfast food, a toastie with slices of ham, tomato and cheese. We hug. She gives me her business card. It is all so simple and unforced I want to sing.

Outside I bump into her man, Deon. Red face, small pony tail, quick, followed by a posse of dogs. I tell him I like the paintings in the yard, and he informs me they sell from as little as 500 rand to as much as 2,500 for the big ones. Some go to America, and one just went to Iceland. Wow, I say, and he invites me to his studio, a tiny white trailer half buried in blossoming flowers and half occupied by a bed which has not been made for a while. He tells me he never invites anyone in, not even his wife, because he likes to be antisocial there and just paint. But now he just talks. 

I listen, and feel as if the last three months of watching great African animals abruptly ended and I was now among my own herd, attuned to its needs to be heard and understood.  Deon tells me about his early painting days when he just played with pictures and moved all around the country. And then about his five years in prison and two out on parole. Armed robbery. Some fellow owned him a chunk of money but would not pay back, so Deon went and took what he could. Had a gun. Got caught. 

My eyes slide away from his easel with a bright seascape under construction and move onto a wall. A nude, standing by a chair. Red hair. Dark nipples.  Great composition. "Oh, she was my social worker in prison," Deon says. "No, she did not pose naked. One day, she came into my cell -- it was really tiny -- and I suddenly saw her like this.  And here she is, just as I saw her." He says that after the prison he just wanted to hide and have a quiet life by the sea. Came here. Got to paint a lot, to sell. Met Madz on Facebook. In a few years, he wants to be one of the best 10 painters in the world.

He watches my eyes really closely now, and follows them to a painting sticking out of a pile of seascapes sitting by the door. I can make out some vague outlines of monumental structures collapsing as if under their own great weight and a pair of bare breasts. But there is more.  Deon dusts the canvass off and slaps it extra hard to get rid of some grit I cannot detect. "This one," he points to a woman in a on top of the picture, "is my ex-mistress. And this one is my ex-wife.  They both just cut my head off -- see?"  I see: it is his head, long haired, bloody, inert. And then he adds: "I call it Fall of Babylon."  

We leave the studio. Shake hands. The sky begins to brighten. I will send him the pictures I took. And he can be antisocial again and just paint. Maybe more landscapes, maybe his life. Whatever comes next.  ©Yva Momatiuk

not here

Quiver trees -- also known as kokerboom -- thrive in the southern Namibian desert.

They eat rocks and drink sand, take many years to grow, and as they expand their girth their bark splits and reveals a smooth underlayer in different shades of rock and sand. I like to think that if they were snakes they would shed their tight old bark. But no: they just allow it to crack open and stay, maybe forever. The bark is hard and smooth but the innards are surprisingly spongy and serve as reservoirs of many gallons of water sucked in by the trees during rainy seasons. This pliable softness made it easy for the Bushmen of the Kalahari to hollow out the trees' branches and use these tubular containers as quivers for their deadly arrows.

And here is what happens when John and I look up at quiver trees: we get dazzled. This is because no other trees we know flaunt such exquisite split bark lines along their bodies, the lines which twist, bend and disappear around the next turn. And when we photograph them in a sweet open shade of dusk they also shimmer and cover our lenses with a film of a waxy dust so thin you would never believe how hard it is to get it off.  We know all this, because some weeks ago we spent a whole evening out in the desert with three of them, until the evening became night. And then we had quiver dreams, too, as if unwilling to part with their beauty.

That was some time ago, but it sent us looking for more. And now we are on a quiver tree farm, reputed to preserve the densest quiver grove in all of Namibia, and coupled with some desert acreage covered by large boulders and called, as such places usually are, a playground. Of giants, I think, or some such. 

There are signs here sternly detailing “forbidden” behavior, and clean toilets and a spacious campground, and even a restaurant and a pet warthog and a couple of cheetahs. The cheetahs get fed at 4pm, sharp. Yes, this is a commercial enterprise, and we are not to forget there are certain charges. We understand the owners of this land want to present it to visiting tourists but also prevent any potential problems which often follow the opening of one's hospitable doors. And since we fell in love with quiver trees, we hope we can put up with what any commercial venture can be expected to inject into our tree experience.

We take a look at the giant boulders which are brown and unremarkable, and quickly move on to the trees. There are some walking trails here, and a good number of quiver trees of all sizes, bolstered by more brown boulders. We walk and walk. We look and look. And try, and try again. Then, as the evening darkens, we meet somewhere on the slope and silently shake our heads. No, it did not happen. No pictures. No enchantment. No music lifting our spirits. A flat void. 

Later we try to dissect the reasons. We quote the signs suggesting prosecution by the owner of the grove: perhaps our minds became too tight and worried because of these naked threats?  We also come up with the wrong age of the trees: are they too old and already outlived their most beautiful stages? I even remember a noisy tourist who seemed to be everywhere at once, talking incessantly to her two silent male companions: maybe her loud voice prevented me from concentrating and really seeing what I came to see?  We string all these and other reasons into an impossibly convoluted web of excuses. But it all sounds lame and untrue.

"Listen," I say to John, "I think I may have a picture I like. At one point, I put my head inside the canopy of a really old tree, and met a rock hyrax who came up from the other side. We almost bumped our noses, and it was totally unexpected for both of us."  We find the frame and look at it together. The hyrax, bright eyed and alert, is -- after all -- considered the closest living relative of an elephant, and even if we are not sure if this information is reliable it is nice to think you can meet it up the tree when all else is lost. 

We look again at my little picture and suddenly understand what we are missing here. We miss the enchantment which comes with solitude and not knowing what will happen next. We miss the sense that we must trust some forces outside ourselves which can make things happen unexpectedly at any time. Yes, there is the grove and the trees and the trails to walk around them. But it is all too set, too ready to be appreciated and photographed to be magnificent and dazzling. It is predictable and finite, and we cannot make it intimate and our own. And except for the little hyrax there are no surprises, the very essence of what we need. He saves the show a bit, but just enough to see that such well appointed offerings are alien to us and as many times removed from our joy as he is from his distant elephant cousins.

©Yva Momatiuk

all you do

So, all you do is take pictures?

This mildly offensive question people asked us for years used to drive John quietly nuts. And the most memorable outburst of his frustration took place many moons ago in New Zealand. 

We spent a long mid-winter night in an unheated and unlit shepherds' hut, waiting for the punishing predawn hour when John had to get up, find his frozen boots in the dark and, hungry and cold, drive to meet Henk DeBroekert. Henk, a former air force pilot and a high country farmer, was about to look for his Merino sheep stranded in the fresh snow on the upper slopes of his station. And since we were working on our high country story for National Geographic magazine, we had to follow sheep farmers up the gorges and ridges of the Southern Alps, ride their sturdy horses bred to withstand glacial river currents, and generally try to stay alive.

John already learned from Henk this early morning slog was to take but a few hours and the men would walk fast, and I decided to attend to other matters. But the quest for the stranded woollies occupied all day and took the men across many exposed snow fields polished blue by gale force winds. Eventually they made their way down in the gathering dusk and Henk drove away, while John tried to return to our bone-freezing hut. He did not go far: a flat tire. Hungry, tired and cold, he managed to wrestle his spare on, but within a short distance got another flat: the sharp gravel of high country back roads was legendary for shredding rubber tires as if they were marshmallows. He had to walk.

"I will kill the next bastard who asks us if all we do is take pictures," were his first words after he came in. It was said calmly but had to be said.

Our flat tires meant we could not use our car, and next morning a shepherd who was going to town gave us a lift so we could have them fixed. Nursing a big hangover from the night before, he was nevertheless a chatty man. As soon as he learned what we were doing in this remote corner of the McKenzie Basin, he earnestly asked: "so all you do is take pictures?" We had to laugh, and since then it never bothered us.

And now, about 38 years later on the coast of Namibia we suddenly remembered this no longer irksome question. 

We arrived on a crescent gravel beach the night before, tired enough to turn in after many hours spent in the bright desert light and sharp whiffs of the sand-packed wind. The sea was just barely slapping the dark coastal rocks and lifting strands of kelp in a fluid motion of a breathing giant expanding his chest now and then. I perched on a low ridge and photographed the red sun sliding magnificently behind the wet fog bank. And John, who spotted flamingos patrolling the surf, stretched out on the sand and followed their slow to and fro progress parallel to the coast until no number of pixels could do them justice. 

The night came. We cooked and ate our supper, downloaded the day's pictures, looked at them with our eyes already gluing shut, made our narrow bed, and tried to follow another luminous fragment of Helen Macdonald's new book, "H Is For Hawk" read aloud by John. We slept.

And this morning our rented camper would not start. Its main battery was as flat as a pancake. How? Why? Never mind. Flat is flat. It means no juice. No spark. In Africa. On the coast. Miles from the nearest town.

I do not understand electricity and I fear it, so I was no help: if anything, I was a hindrance. What would I do? Wait until someone with a functioning battery and jump cables showed up. Relying on someone's help is not my usual mode of problem solving, but the only one that came to my mind. But -- will someone show up? And -- when? And will they have jump cables?

In the meantime John, who approaches electrical problems as if they were polite and harmless LEGO pieces, wanted to jump the defunct object from our auxiliary battery stored in the back and feeding our camper's inside lights. But we searched, and there were no jump cables anywhere. Trust John, I said to myself. Just -- for Pete's sake -- trust the man. Remember the time you lost your glasses in the Arctic river while crossing it on foot, fished them out, discovered one side piece was gone, and John carved for you a new one from a caribou antler using his Swiss Army knife and tied it to the frame with some dry sinew? And the time -- perhaps more pertinent to our predicament now -- when he rewired our entire house right after we bought it, because it had to be done? Trust him!

And he solved it. He removed the dead battery and brought the auxiliary unit from the back. And since the auxiliary was twice the size and would not fit, he tilted it sharply and wedged one of its corners into the small space vacated by the old battery until he could attach the PLUS terminal lead. Then -- in order to connect the short ground lead to the tilted auxiliary -- he spanned the distance with one of the tools he always carries, a simple pair of vise grips, and extended its length with the lug wrench, solid enough to do the job.

Then -- while holding the ends of both tools together to assure conductivity -- he said: " Get in and turn the engine on."  The engine roared back to life.  As we hit the gravel road, we remembered the question which used to drive John nuts. 

And all we still do is take pictures.

©Yva Momatiuk

the big squeeze

We sleep in the shadow of elephant gallows. 

This is not quite correct, for the elephants in Etosha National Park were killed on the ground and not hanged: they were first tranquilized with darts, then shot. But the structure, erected to hoist and then butcher huge inert bodies of the largest mammals still walking the Earth resembles oversized gallows of old. 

Viewed from a lofty ramp leading to a new thatched hide, which provides a comfortable setting for tourists wishing to watch animals coming to a new and ecologically sound waterhole, the tall structure looks incongruous and otherworldly. It has a name and is called, rather grandly, Olifantsrus Field Abbatoir. And it rises not just above the soft red soil of this lovely campground and its neat structures housing a reception, a small museum and ablution blocks, but also above the vast plain of the park, its golden winter grasses and its many denizens whose shapes we can sometimes discern when we look hard and long. The structure is beginning to rust and, come evening, the rust blotches start to resemble dried blood.

What happened? I learn that 525 elephants were killed and butchered here in the early 1980s. A well lit display in the camp's museum tells me the animals were culled officially and legally, with all rubber stamps firmly affixed to whatever reports needed to be prepared and signed.

The display explains that as poaching of elephants accelerated in Northwest Namibia, many pachyderms sensed the danger and migrated to the safety of the park. But since 1983 was a terribly dry year in Etosha and its grassy cover shriveled and died, the management decided to remove a percentage of the park's largest herbivores. It already happened in the Kruger in South Africa, and in other national parks. And it was to be done for very good reasons: to slow the process called desertification of the environment, which would endanger all animals living here, including the black rhino, a standard bearer of Africa's endangered species. 

And it was to be done better than anywhere else. The workers, hired to perform the job, had to adhere to three main points. Entire herds -- appropriately called family units -- had to be killed to avoid dispersal of upset and confused survivors. All butchered elephant parts had to be utilized and delivered to markets, with no waste left behind. And the maximum amount of scientific data had to be obtained.  It was all done, documented and even photographed. And since a picture of a hoisted elephant body was perhaps not available, an artist rendered the scene in soft pastels. A lifeless gray bulk with its dangling trunk, suspended on a steel cable from the tall white frame against the pale African sky. It comes to me in my dreams. 

I do not accuse anyone here. We all know that as our human population grows, we need -- and take -- more room. Room to grow our crops, build our shelters, factories and roads, utilize our water supplies, extract our minerals and fossil fuels. When Etosha  -- meaning 'Great White Place' -- was proclaimed a game reserve in 1907, it covered approximately 30,000 square miles and was at that time the largest natural protected area in the world. Today, after many adjustments and trims, it has been reduced to about 8,500 square miles. It is still grand and beautiful, and it could easily cover half of Switzerland, but it already feels the big squeeze of human population relentlessly pushing against its borders. 

And it is not just the shrinking of its size. We sometimes hear the whoop of helicopters patroling the park and looking for rhino poachers. Yes, there is a tall fence surrounding the park to prevent animal migrations from damaging farm fields and water pumps and other infrastructure, something African pastoralists around the park rightly fear. But poachers dig under the fence or cut it, sneak in, kill a rhino, cut off its tusks, and most often vanish. 

There are also many waterholes with parkings for tourists, where much of the wildlife of Etosha must come during these hard dry winter days to survive. We see many herds of antelopes, zebras and giraffes -- family units all -- eagerly approaching the water but often stopping, hesitating, backing off, trying again, and at times turning and sinking into the surrounding bush without a sip. Sometimes it is our presence causing their retreat. Sometimes it is other cars rolling in and out, with eager faces bright in every window and excited voices spelling out surprise and joy. In and out. Kicking up dust to see the show. Going for night safaris, with guides shining lights on animals. In and out.

It all adds to pressure.

And so it goes, not just in Etosha but in every corner of the world. As our population grows, the ranks of wildlife diminish to the point that frequent visitors to nature reserves call animals they know by names they bestowed on them. Oh, we do want to protect these creatures, and see them live their magnificent wild lives. But since we do not want to give up anything we need and want -- we squeeze them. More and more. Day after day. 

Tonight we will sleep in the shadow of elephant gallows.    © Yva Momatiuk

lion morning

The warm days of our Namibian winter turn our skin silky and dry. Our stay in Etosha National Park enters its second month, and John and I are trying to plan our moves a bit. We know our predictions will not materialize, for we are dealing with nature and its habit of ignoring human plans. Nevertheless, out of the old and rigid habit of trying to make some sense out of our short winter days, we attempt to control at least our moves. And since we are both photographers and no one is playing a second fiddle in our working union, we often start our days by asking: "Where do you want to go now?" and then turn the incoming ideas to and fro, looking for some vague promise of great animal dramas which will surely happen somewhere in the desert but are still unknowable.

This morning we are trying to catch the rising sun climbing above a nearby waterhole, as well as drinking giraffes and their elongated reflections in the crimson pond. The concept so described sounds awfully trite, but pulling it off well is not. Besides, when we arrive the banks of the waterhole are empty. We wait, watching the sun climbing mercilessly and stripping the crimson right off the water, then drive away, mildly disappointed. At the bottom of the slight hill we meet a family of giraffes and John rolls down his window: "Too late, guys. Maybe tomorrow?" he suggests pleasantly. I look around and see a bunch of animal shapes spilling on the gravel road ahead. A whole Rolodex of ideas suddenly explodes in my mind. Birds? Too big. Impalas? Too heavy. Zebras? Too long. What I sense -- rather than see -- is the softness. Not the staccato of tense little feet of most herbivores. Not the lumbering heavy duty shuffle of rhinos. Not the fleeting smudge of running jackals or a quick trot of warthogs.

Lions. A line of lions, going places. Look, I tell John, this is crazy: the whole road is full them, let's go!  But John turns our rig back and drives to the waterhole. He is right. The lions are already coming, their fur the color of dry African grass, their paws massive and soft, padding along the wide elephant trail one after another.  We count them as they crouch and slurp the water shining between the rocks: there are twelve. Twelve days of Christmas, so it may be a gift from Etosha. The lions are young, with several males just sprouting their adolescent manes, and their bodies are still unscarred, beautiful. They take their sweet time, drink, swat each other, stretch, yawn, and slowly depart. We exhale. Probably we got no pictures, we say, since the cats were terribly back-lit and as usual did not listen to our silent pleas not to overlap each other. But it was great to see them. So many!

We go for a slow and relaxing bush drive in the opposite direction from the one the lions took. Soon, a dik-dik. Tiny, all brown like a horse chestnut, the smallest antelope the size of a large hare with spindly little legs. The animal is resting in the sun, peaceful and sleepy. We photograph and admire. It is warm, cozy, companionable, and perfectly safe.

Then  -- a muted growl. Very low, subterranean, with a whoosh of great lungs exhaling; unmistakable and very close. Then another. And again. Our dik-dik is already on his feet, and my survival sense quickly informs me I am vulnerable: my window is rolled down, and my arm cradling the telephoto lens propped on its sill is not far from the ground. One good leap, and grab, and pull. Isn't it exactly how that young woman died in South Africa only two months ago? And how about two lions killing a tourist sleeping in his bag near a watering hole here in Etosha, in 1993? And the lioness who was shot and killed by the park's staff last year, after she entered our Etosha bush camp through a hole warthogs had dug under the fence surrounding the camp?

I bypass my fear and we reverse slowly, gluing our eyes to the bush where only moments ago we saw nothing at all. The growls keep coming, now more in unison. "Digestive sounds," whispers John, and he is right again: you do not growl this way while hunting or traveling.  And -- yes. A mere stone's throw back, close to the road and betrayed only by small openings in the exceptionally thick bush which are now filled with tawny fur, there are four more lions. Digesting. Growling softly. Sending their voices out in ripe, throaty belches of contentment and latent power, while we no longer feel safe. And suddenly we understand we never should. Not here. Not now. Not even for a blink.  ©Yva Momatiuk

bedazzled

Seen from the air, it could be a crazy patchwork of dark waterways and sandy spits, or perhaps narrow plots of land -- some dark, some light -- laid out in a desert and awaiting the first hint of green. From up close, and as close as our long lenses can reach, it is a pure geometry of survival, painted on zebras' flanks, necks and heads.

If this kaleidoscope of stripes, which move constantly when a herd of zebras is in its full escape flight, seems disorienting, it is supposed to be. Dazzling, unsettling, unfocussed; all this. And that's why -- for many years now -- the answer to "why do zebras have stripes?" was quite firm: to mislead and confuse big predatory cats in their intense pursuit of sweet zebra flesh.

But a new theory suggests that air currents caressing a zebra move fast over its dark and heat absorbing stripes, and slow when flowing over the light ones. As these airflows converge, the swirling air cools the skin, particularly of the animals whose dark stripes are heavily clustered. The difference of the body temperature between a zebra and a plain-skinned herbivore in the same part of Africa may reach several degrees Fahrenheit, making the zebra a truly cool animal. Another theory proposes that many disease-carrying insects avoid striped animal skin, perhaps leaving zebras alone -- and not infected.   ©Yva Momatiuk

talking to animals

"Yes, you, the little springbok. Get your head up."

"No, not you.. the one behind you."

"Please do not cover his horn with yours. Please."

"Now, move to the right and stop scratching. I cannot see your head when you do this."

"How about a drink? And may I see your lapping tongue?"

John and I are huddling at a remote waterhole in Etosha National Park in Namibia, and I am trying to communicate my artistic needs to several dozen animals who drifted in from the surrounding flatness of the desert to get a drink. And the more actors appear on my stage, the harder it is to find a composition which moves the heart. I see my monologue falls on deaf ears but hey, it does not hurt to try.

"Please don't move! Not one step."

"Turn... turn... turn... a bit more. More. Thank you. This is really good."

"Stay there if you can. Please. I am still waiting for that oryx."

"Where are you going? They may finally all drink, and you will get in front of them."

"Keep moving! Now you are overlapping with my ostriches."

Only this morning I realize that as soon as I bring my eye to the viewfinder of my camera to photograph wild animals, I begin to talk to them, usually in my mind. But here in Africa I actually speak. Softly, in a low and constant patter. I am polite but also maddeningly persistent. And I offer a string of suggestions, even though the animals are oblivious to my desires.

"If you just move left, this foal could also get in and get a drink, too. And I need him there."

"What are you doing? Please stay out of my frame, just for a moment."

"You are about to cover my oryx, and you don't want to get into this mud anyway."

"See? This was no good. Just stay where you are: your ass looks perfectly good there."

"Oh no! This was such a wrong move... My mistake. Sorry."

Persistently, and at times desperately, I am trying to choreograph the animals coming into my frame. They do what they want, but I do not quit. But why am I not content with what I see, and instead try to direct them, even if what I do is so ridiculous? Perhaps some ancient cultural imperative of all humans is making me try to rule this wild and unruly roost. Or maybe I want these photographs to show the awe I feel when I am in their presence, and I need my animals to help me. But this is not it.

I just love them. The little springbok, who ruins my composition. The ostrich, who shows me his plucked ass when I need his head and overlaps with another giant bird. The oryx, who seems to walk on someone's back. 

And I feel this love makes them my good and tolerant friends. They may not do what I want but at times they will suddenly do far more than I had ever asked them for, and overwhelm me with their wild and boundless generosity. They will suddenly show me what I could not even imagine possible. And it will be perfect in every way.

Not today, but maybe soon.     ©Yva Momatiuk

crazy like a giraffe

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    We scramble out of our narrow camper bed well before sunrise, glad to escape its sliding seat pillows we again tried last night to tie together with a nylon rope, and drive off to forage for images. 

It is a difficult undertaking, since Etosha National Park in Namibia is a flat expanse of a sparsely overgrown desert with no eye-boggling sand dunes, soaring rocky outcrops and fat glistening rivers. Instead, the park embraces an enormous salt pan, now dry and wrinkled with cracked mud, and scores of dense clusters of low trees and shrubs, mostly armed with sharp spikes and all dusty and inhospitable. But never mind the thorns. The park rules forbid visitors from leaving their vehicles and looking for wildlife on foot, so either some animals come to you, turn just the way you want them without overlapping or dropping their noses behind a rock, and do exactly what you hope -- and wish-- and pray -- they would do, or you will get nothing at all. Again. And again.

From time to time, other park visitors report some miraculous sightings we are always too late or too early to see: a baby black rhino killed by four young lions, a bunch of zebras swimming in a waterhole, a leopard scouting the thicket... 

It is easy to get discouraged. 

And now it is another noon hour, the time of pesky black shadows and bleached rocks and bland sky; never kind to our pictures or, come to think of it, to us. We try another waterhole, flat and silvery, with a band of white rocks dotting its banks and a fringe of dark trees forming another horizontal strip which, should any animal appear, would dissect its background in all the wrong places. There are also some distant giraffes, standing like tall sentinels amidst the horizontal landscape of Africa, resting, or drinking. This is a lovely and soothing view, but hardly inspiring: the light is truly bad, the animals distant and mostly in repose.

There is a movement. Now!

All elongated thin legs and improbably tall necks, two baby giraffes suddenly go berserk with their joy of speed, galloping together across the sun drenched desert. Running is not uncommon, of course, and many young animals run, and run often, but what we see here is a superbly coordinated chaos of flying limbs, snaking long necks and flapping short tails, followed by a cloud of pale dust. 

The babies jump and twist and reverse directions not unlike superbly trained figure skaters, and gallop with their mouth open, sucking in the arid desert air of Namibia. Unlike their mothers, they do not spend much time drinking: since they are still suckling they do not yet depend on water for sustenance and get enough moisture with their diet of milk.

And -- a surprise. Even from a distance we see the giraffes' baby horns are bristling with stiff black hairs covering the bony tops. These are females: the tops of male giraffe horns are always bare. And this is our surprise, because such playful behavior among large and powerful herbivores is usually a domain of young males, while females are often calmer and seem to regard such antics with a hint of disapproval. 

But perhaps these two young giraffes are among those who defy this pattern of restrain, even though their future lives of long pregnancies and rearing of the young may force them to use their energy only when it seems to make sense in terms of survival. Or perhaps they are simply less watchful and self-aware, and a bit more crazy than some others. No one will ever know.    ©Yva Momatiuk