WRITING PROMPT RESPONSE

Seasons in Life

And in nature

Seasons. There is so much in my life getting described in seasons. I am a seasonal worker. I take leave in the off-season. I travel across countries to avoid the season of winter. And I experience different seasons on different continents.

So where should I start?

High and low season

My work. Or the work I used to do. Sandboarding. I used to teach tourists how to board down a sand dune. Similar to snowboarding. But on the sand. In the desert.

A job like every other one in tourism. Season related. We had a high season. In some years I would work three months straight through. Without having a single day off.

And then there would come low season. Where I would work sometimes only two or three days a week. This is usually when I would take off. For a month or so. To go travel abroad.

I got paid per trip. So the income fluctuated tremendously. From one month to another. Saving money in the high season was vital for the low season. To get through the year one had to do some planning.

Off-season

Later I became a skydiving instructor. The life between high and low season continued. Starting to work abroad to avoid off-seasons. Because off-seasons means no income. Or at least very little.

But there is always somewhere in the world the right season for skydiving. Which is usually summer. In some places, you can even jump all year around. Like in Namibia for example.

In other places, you can only jump and therefore work for half a year. Like in Germany for example. The season for us was a few months short due to Covid last year.

But hopefully this year we will get again a full season. Because everything tourism related is in off-season right now. And it feels like already for a year. Hopefully for not much longer.

Winter and summer

I must admit. Together with the new hobby that I turned into my job I started to avoid one season. Winter. And I do miss it. I love snow. I love snowboarding. I love building igloos. And I love having snowball fights.

But when did I last get to experience a proper winter? With snow. With snowboarding. And cross country skiing. And igloos. It has been a while. Four years to be exact.

I’ve seen snow in between. On my hikes high up in the alps during the European summers. But that’s not the same. I would love to be in Europe right now. They have the winter of a lifetime.

A season like no other.

But don’t get me wrong. I love them all. Every season. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and winter. I live them as they come. Yet they aren’t all the same. A Namibian winter is far from a winter I grew up with.

Bringing me to the next topic…

Rainy season

I got introduced to this kind of season about seven years ago. Every time I talk about it I have to add another year to it. But it has been that many years already since I stepped foot onto the African continent for the first time.

And that is when I got introduced to the dry season and rainy season. Ghana was the first African country I went to explore. And I got drained in heavy rain for the first few months and then all of a sudden there was no rain at all.

Which was new to me. Back home in Germany, I can expect rain every day of the year. In all four seasons. Even in winter. It doesn’t always come down as snow. It rains as well in winter.

But it doesn’t rain in the dry season in Ghana. That’s what I learned.

And later on, I learned in Namibia what the rainy season really means. The word doesn’t just refer to the fact we get rain. It also refers to the outcome. Which is nature changing the country into a green landscape.

In a way, I’ve never seen that before. Germany is green even at the very end of winter. Don’t try to disagree with me or I’ll send you a picture of the desert in the dry season. Then you’ll know what I mean.

The changes this country does between dry and rainy season are incredible. I am talking about Namibia. A sub-Saharan country that is home to the oldest desert in the world. The Namib desert.

But also to a country that has large areas of semi-deserts and savannas. Bushland that only turns into a bush if it receives rain. Which it didn’t for most of my years being here.

Until this year.

This year I learned what the rainy season means. The power of water is unbelievable. What it does to a landscape. Breathtakingly beautiful.

Seasons in life

I’m going through phases in my life which could also be described as seasons. What is a season? A certain time period that is characteristic of something.

Just before I left for Africa I used to play Handball. Actively. I played around four times a week excluding the matches on the weekends. Our season would go from September until April.

Later on, I went through other sports which I would do for a season or a bit longer. Like rock climbing. Or surfing. That didn’t last very long. But now I picked up stand up paddleboarding. And that seems to be my latest passion.

Being an active outdoorsy person my seasons do go around nature and work. Which mostly get influenced by each other. I hope you got an insight into the seasons of my life.

Thanks Dennett for the creative writing prompt once again and I can’t wait to read everyone else’s writing prompt responses.

More about my writing prompt responses in W&W…

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Anne Bonfert is a traveler. Photographer. Writer. Teacher. Skydiving instructor. Adventure enthusiast. Nature lover. And fell in love with the African continent.