Sep 29 2007
The Dancing Jewel
On a blazing hot day in the Kerio Valley, in north-western Kenya, I
took respite from the midday sun by a stream shaded by gigantic
ancient fig trees. The Kerio valley is an extension of the Great Rift
Valley. It is a stunning geographical feature with waterfalls plunging
from cloud forests down 3,000 - 4,000 ft escarpments with acacia
woodlands on the valley floor. It can get very hot in the valley, and
the streams fed by the forests in the highlands above support precious
strands of riverine trees…
Promise cavorts, hovering above the moving waters. Life erupts with
enthusiasm, fed by distant, rumbling thunderstorms. A stream cuts
through soft, dark rock. Cold and sweet in a place of heat, thorns and
dust, it offers a soothing illusion.
I seek its softness as a respite from the harsh, bitter heat.
Midday is cruel.
Light slams down with vertical, biting vigour. Hornbills and Turacos
pant listless in the shade. Even the eternal raucous optimist, a
vociferous Tropical Boubou, struggles to chortle with emphatic joy.
Only the ants, a kind that thrive in heat, move in dizzying swirls,
maddened by hunger for others, less fortunate, who have succumbed.
The water is in shadow.
Stoic giants guard the precious embryo beneath. Its silvery blood
nourishes their feet. In jest, they throw down confetti of
multi-coloured leaves. Damp and brittle. Crisp and smooth. They cover
the naked eroded edges of this sudden gutter with a pointillist
tapestry.
A rock smoothed by time beckons.
Here one could rest and dream. Leaves above, green and gold. Leaves
below, copper and saffron. And the quiet song of flowing peace.
Then all is shattered by beauty.
Imagine a vision so intense it burns straight into one’s soul. Rising
before me an incandescence darts and dives. A price must be paid for
entering this sacred grove. One must witness to absolute beauty in
return for a crumb of the sacrament. A ‘Dancing Jewel’ flits before me
- this is a damselfly, perhaps one of the loveliest creatures in the
world. The colours are unbelievable…
Turquoise! Cobalt! Rose-Madder Crimson! Orange! Black! White! Sepia! Bronze!
Smouldering colours unite haphazard in one being.
As if to say, ‘I was waiting for you here!’ He dances with unfettered
joy. Red legs waving with white within fuse into pink opalescence. His
richly blue back, turquoise shot with cobalt-ultramarine, wiggles,
etching scratches of brightness in the air.
All else is still, distant, irrelevant. The world is shrunk to this
singular infinity being acted out in a sunspot.
A thing of beauty…
I forget to breathe.
The dance goes on!
My heart is clasped forever. No moment hither nor since exists. All
blurs into a kaleidoscope of frenzied timeless adulation.
Sublime. Rapture. Illusion.
This incredible damselfly, darting among the rocks on a sun-spotted
stream, is but one of millions of different kinds of insects each one
of them interesting, beautiful and intrinsically linked to the world
that they, and we, inhabit.