Water Lilies

There is a room at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris that I love to visit. It is an oval room filled with Monet's water lilies. There is a comfortable, soft bench in the middle of the room and people are not to speak, silence. The idea is to sit quietly and soak in the lilies. Monet starting painting the lilies around 1890 and gave them to France in 1918 as an offering of peace. There are over 200 in this series and they depict the beauty of lilies and river systems.

I think of Monet and the museum in Paris as I float through lilies in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, one of the largest inland deltas in Africa. I am in a mokoro, a traditional dug-out wooden canoe. We are low to the water and a guide pushes the boat forward with a pole. All one hears is sound of nature. I wonder what Monet would have produced if he were exposed to this exquisite place.  

(Click on the photos to enlarge)