Category: Juniper’s Journal

So much has happened in the span of four days that I feel as if years on the vine of time have come and gone. There was romance. There was a world of red boulders covered in petroglyphs painted by ancient men. There was an animal utopia where I got chased by a black rhino...

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I arrive back to Walvis Bay all desert-dirty, with my head still soaking in that sci-fi world of acid sunsets, dunes, and ice plants. A desert is an ocean without saltwater, but its rainbow is flashier. Dramatic, colorful, stunning, vast, strange. Is there any part of the ocean that isn't always shifting? Tides, currents, waves,...

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There are more colors in this desert than there are names for. The colors evolve, twisting, turning, and bending with the sun. There are shadows too. There are always shadows. Plenty. The desert shadows are long and dark, but never wicked. I sit on a hilltop and watch the sunset drench Moon Mountain in hues...

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I'm in the front seat of a 4x4 shuttle bus heading south towards a desert with a fossilized landscape called Sossusvlei. It means Dead End Marsh. The driver is letting me DJ. He particularly likes Billie Eilish and is from a part of Namibia that speaks in a series of clicking sounds. In the back...

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The moon is full and there is a winter tilt to the earth. I'm riding a camel named Smoke through an ephemeral river in the desert that looks like a little moon landscape. There isn't any water in the river, only sand. This entire part of the sphere that I'm in is a mystery of...

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I’m in the front seat of a 4x4 with a man named Connie Burger. His daughter Nikki is in the backseat. She’s about my age. Gert, who is helping me repair Juniper, is also back there. Speaking of repairing Juniper, I forgot to tell you that my Hydrovane was making all of these lateral movements...

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Everything in Namibia matches my pink engine. The jellyfish. The pink pelican named Lady Gaga that lives on the dock and is the size of a miniature horse. The flamingos. The pink salt lakes. The desert sand that blushes pink at sunset and moves as if by sorcery in swirling patterns shaped by the ocean...

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I think I have spent 99 percent of this voyage horizontal, under a pile of blankets and a teal down feather sleeping bag named Moonshine that I’ve had since I was 14. Moonshine has seen bears in Alaska with me, swaddled me as I’ve slept on mud, spoon-fed me alien dreams on an island called...

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I’m heading west looking for wind. West is also the opposite direction of all the “Caution / Waarskuwing : rocks and shoals" warnings on the chart. I’m not going anywhere fast, I can tell you that much. I feel like a cowgirl on a three legged horse, just inching my way across the ocean. Mercury...

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I have been eagerly awaiting dawn. The sun is supposedly up now, but you wouldn’t know it. The sky is muted by a thick white haze. The days out here feel short and the charcoal nights are excruciatingly long. The wind and sea are back up and this sea is really nuts. Truly. The waves...

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