thephotosocietyのインスタグラム(thephotosociety) - 8月24日 11時29分

Photo: @momatiukeastcott/@thephotosociety | not here | Quiver trees, known as kokerboom in Africa, thrive in the Namibian desert. They eat rocks and drink sand, take years to grow, and as they expand their girth their bark splits and reveals a smooth underlayer in many shades. If they were snakes they could shed their old bark but they just allow it to crack open and stay. The bark is hard, but the innards are soft and spongy reservoirs for water sucked in during rainy seasons. No wonder the Bushmen of the Kalahari hollowed out the trees' branches and made durable quivers for their deadly arrows.

When John and I look 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 the sweet open shade of dusk they 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 this, because we recently made this photograph on a remote hillside at dusk and then had quiver dreams, unwilling to part with the trees'
beauty. We found amazing images and wanted more.

And so we visited a quiver tree farm, coupled with land covered with large boulders. There were clean toilets, a restaurant and two cheetahs which get fed at 4pm. A commercial enterprise. Still, we hoped this will not spoil our tree experience, so we walked and looked and tried, but found no music lifting our spirits. No pictures. A flat void.

Later we tried to understand it. Was it the signs suggesting prosecution if we broke any rules? Were the trees too old? Was it a noisy tourist, who seemed to be everywhere and chattering incessantly? And suddenly we understood that what we were missing was the solitude and enchantment which comes with searching and finding the unexpected. This was all too set, too ready to be appreciated and photographed to be dazzling. Too predictable. And as much as we tried, we could not make it our own. ©Yva Momatiuk

#Namibia #Africa #kokerboom #Quivertree #momatiukeastcott

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