Danse Macabre

Two desiccated camel thorn trees stand stranded in the desolate landscape of the Deadvlei in the Namib-Nakluft National Park in Namibia. The Deadvlei is a clay pan into which excess rainfall used to flood seasonally from the Tsauchab river. When the rains failed and the river dried up, the trees were left to die in the desert heat having become cut off by the shifting dunes. These trees appear interlocked like two praying mantises in a dance of death - and have been so for 700 years.