Years ago, when I was a boy, I used to devour the western novels of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. I used to imagine what it must be like to ride day after day across the Great Plains of the United States, where there was nothing on the horizon. Later, when I studied American history, I read how some of the early pioneers, travelling across the grasslands in their Conestoga wagons who, when faced by the vast emptiness, had gone mad and committed suicide. I wondered what such emptiness could be like, what sort of experience it would be like to drive for hours across roads where, for 360°, there were no features, no mountains, no…nothing. how would I feel? Would I love it? Would the space cause me to rejoice or would it terrify me?
I thought the Tankwa Karoo would answer the question for me, but I could see mountains in the distance, a vastly magnified version of the Maniototo and, while it came close, it did not really tell me what I wanted to feel. My African friends told me to go to Namibia, where ” the distances are truly vast”. I would find that experience there.
And I did.
Driving up the B1, from Keetmanshoop to Mariental, I finally got to experience it. As I drove, with the vehicle sitting on 140, the land seemed to stand still. Wherever I looked, the horizon was completely featureless. No mountains, lurking like Kilroy along the edge of the sky, playing hide-and-seek with me, no clouds to fracture the steelblue dome of the sky.
I needed to know. I stopped the vehicle and got out. I walked away from it and looked. And felt. Then I twanged my emotions. Fear? No, not at all. The faintest trace of agoraphobia? Nothing detectable. So I surrendered, dropped my guard and allowed the space in. In the sunlight, standing there with only me and the vehicle present, on a thin black shimmering strip surrounded by fields of soft lemon grass, which stretched out to the horizon beyond my awareness, I could imagine myself waiting for Godot.
Estragon: Charming spot. Inspiring prospects. Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
If I stretched my arms out at 180° and pointed at the opposing horizons, I could circumscribe the horizon, arching above, flat below. Perhaps the earth really was flat after all. Perhaps our planet did ride on the back of the Great Turtle as it moved across the Universe. Time had ceased to exist, Meaning was an existential construct. Did I really exist at all?
Then I realised that, for all my musings, an emotion was creeping in, sliding in under the cover of the diaphanous yellow grasses, stalking me..
Exhilaration. Joy. Delight.
Here I was in the middle of Somewhere, with nothing around me. Pure, unmitigated , unexpurgated Nothing.
And it was wonderful.
Now I knew how the first scouts out on the Great Plains must have felt, knowing that the next stage of their adventure was a script which was theirs to write, how the great pioneer photographer Timothy O’ Sullivan must have felt as he accompanied Clarence King’s Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel into the wilderness.
You are on your own. Help may come… at some point.
Or it may not.
Write your own script, but choose wisely.
Up to you.
You can point to the horizon in every direction, you can draw the line without interruption. There is no one in your way. Just you and the land.
Whether I stood here or whether I crossed the land at high speed, Time was largely irrelevant, as it had been for millions of years.
It struck me that we busy ourselves, dividing Time up into smaller and smaller segments which “make sense”, then attempt to fit ourselves inside these cages of our own making. We take something which is supremely….irrelevant, then attempt to give it meaning within a context of our own devising. What is an hour anyway? Merely a artificial invention.
Calendar time, Gregorian time is a human construct, like the right angle which Nature has examined and decided not to use. As such it belongs to the world of illusion and self.
Out here, however, it is of little value and minimal relevance.
I realised that, should I choose, I could get out here, unload a mob of sheep and some dogs,vanish away across the lemon sea and become a shepherd. I could walk by day and sleep under the stars by night. I could guard my flock from jackals and predators, and move in tune with an older and slower rhythm. How curious that I should come to this understanding via my journey as a photographer, where my moments are defined in slices as small as 1/8000 sec. Perhaps the camera had allowed me to realise the true freedom hides not in the minutesthmselves, but in the spaces between them.
To become a shepherd on a lemon sea.
I had Freedom. I had Choice. And I had Responsibility.
Instead of waiting for Godot, I could go in search of Him.
Up to me.
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