In July last year, I wrote that there had been good rains in the Richtersveld and that the flowers would be something to see. But I did not get to go, and this year, too, we did not manage to get away. However, friends did. Marten and Carin took little Carlien to see the wonder that happens in early spring when the sere, inhospitable desert blooms.

The central and western plateau of Southern Africa is an arid expanse, part of it called Karoo by the first nations, meaning "a hard place." It is bounded to the north by the Kalahari, the "vast place" or "land of great thirst." For centuries a barrier to exploration and passage, a refuge to the persecuted, a despair to farmers, this semi-desert also has its beauty for those who take the time to look and linger.

Asking me for the names of the flowers would be a waste of time. There are Aizoaceae or vygies, little succulents, there are Namaqualand daisies or Dimorphoteca Sinuata, various sorts of Gerbera, there are others but for the botanists, I would say: come and see!

One despairs at taking in all of this vast beauty, drinking in and storing it against an uncertain future.

And you feel a little unimportant when you realize that all this beauty would be there even if nobody, also not you, are there to see it.

And so, if you come to see them, you will find one, a hundred, a thousand flowers blooming, and you will be the only person ever to see them.

This display puts us small, self-important humans in our place -- less important than the bees that pollinate the flowers, we do not contribute to this grandeur, we cannot even adequately describe it.

In the end, you give up trying to photograph, describe, study it. In the end, you just discorporate and absorb the beauty, become part of it and then it becomes part of you.