The Sound of Silence

Have you ever arrived at a place so quiet that the only thing you can hear are your thoughts?



The Dead Vlei is such a place.



This little valley is hidden away like Frances Burnett's Secret Garden. The difference lies in the 'walls' that surround it. Not irregular grey stones prised apart by ivy and a determined wisteria. Instead the valley is encompassed, in every direction, by high red sand dunes. Some reaching up to 300 metres tall.



This vlei has an interesting Geography.

It is a clay pan which was formed when the Tsauchab River flooded. The water created temporary shallow pools whose fertile silt attracted quirky camel thorn trees which have become so symbolic of Namibia. They grew and prospered.



Then, there was climate change and drought hit the area.

The huge red dunes started to encroach onto the vlei and eventually they blocked the river out completely.

Bit by bit the trees withered and died. What remains is a tree graveyard, believed to be about 900 years old. The hot African sun has scorched them black as they poke out of the ground, The dry heat prevents decomposure and holds them in a time warp.



My first sight of the vlei was from high up on the crest of a sand dune. It looked small and perfectly formed.



We zig-zagged down the dune. The sand was hot as it slipped under my feet. Once down on the floor of the vlei the silence hit me like a wall.

My guide and I parted company. He went to sit on a fallen tree trunk at the entrance to the vlei. I suspected that he had noticed the impact this place was having on me. Such dramatic nature needs no words.



I was at zero as far as sound was concerned.

I strained to hear something.

Nothing.



No background hum of city traffic, no murmur of conversation, no movement, no wind.

Dead Vlei.

I lay my ear to the warm, soft, white sand and held my breath. I thought I might here a tok-toki beetle scrabbling about underground.

Nothing.



The only thing I could hear were my thoughts which, in the silence, were suddenly very loud. It was as if someone had handed me a big black pair of headphones so that they could speak the words out loud to me.



I noticed that they didn't belong.

None of them reflected where I was or who I was.

I twigged how involved I had been in them....

So, I spent an hour alone with this silence and, to my happiness, my diminishing thought patterns.

I felt the texture of the trees, took in the contrasting colours of the sand and looked at the shapes that the dried clay had made on the ground.



There is a strong healing energy to this landscape, the sort that draws you present. This was to be a recurring theme as I travelled around this vast wilderness of red desert and big skies.