Goofing off on top of Wereldsend Mountain
By Molly Talbert (Middlebury College ’14)
We had only finished our finals the day before, but standing on top of Wereldsend Mountain made all of our academics seem worlds away.
At that point, we had been at Wereldsend for two weeks, with much of that time having been spent on our projects, studying for the Natural History practical exam, and then taking five finals in two days.
We were all exhausted and needed to pack for our final departure from Wereldsend, but somehow we managed to get ourselves up at 5:15 AM to go climb a mountain.
It was a scramble to get to the top and took about an hour and a half to make it to the summit. The rocks were a little loose and there always seemed to be a thorny bush in the exact spot you were planning on going. But, with some determination, everyone made it to the top.
The view was expansive, all-encompassing, and complex. For every dip in the ground below, there was a rise – a dry riverbed for a pointy mountain in the distance. And, way down below us, were two white dots where our trucks were. And, a little farther in the distance was a patch of green – Wereldsend.
At the top, nestled in a pile of rocks, there was an old tin can with a lid, and inside was a notebook. The notebook was like a time capsule for thoughts and went all the way back to 1996. Flipping through it, it was clear that we weren’t the only people who had had a fixation on the mountain whose shadow we’d been living under for three months. There were so many different stories and climbing the mountain had meant something different for each climber.
Once we managed to scramble back down the mountain, we packed up and prepared to leave for Mowe Bay, on the Skeleton Coast, the next day. From there, it was onto Swakopmund and then to Windhoek – it was exactly a week before the program ended.
Packing the trucks and driving away from Wereldsend towards Skeleton Coast National Park was both sad and exciting for me. Sad, because the semester was ending and our Elephant Family would soon be parting ways. Exciting, thinking about going home to school and being able to apply what I’ve learned here to other places.
As we passed through the gate to the Skeleton Coast and the landscape changed, the wind picked up, and the temperature dropped, I thought of one message that I had read in the book on top of Wereldsend Mountain: “Why is it called Wereldsend? It is the beginning of the world!”
That is what Wereldsend did for us. It opened the world, made us see more, think harder, and show us tha this is just the beginning.
Miles, Kristen and Maggie check out museum artifacts at Mowe Bay, Skeleton Coast National Park
The group at Mowe Bay, Skeleton Coast National Park