The Treacherous Pans

Botswana has a lot of pans.  Not those kind of pans, the geologic kind.  A pan is an ancient lake bed that dried up thousands of years ago.  They are large, flat bottomed features with a high concentration of minerals.  Nothing much can grow here.  During the rainy season some water may collect here.  Right now the ground is dry with large cracks.  There are a few small white stones that are scattered around. I pick up one and it looks like a dry chemical accretion.

The pans can be quite large.  They can easily be spotted once you know what you are looking at.  Khama Rhino Reserve that we posted about a while back had several pans that had enough top soil to support grass and some shrubs and an occasional tree.

The most dramatic pans have nothing but air.  For some reason a few cows hang out on this pan.  Later I spot two donkeys.

Bob tells us that the pans can be a bit treacherous.  They look very solid, but when there has been rain, they form a crust that conceals a very soft under-layer.  Fun-loving folks try to drive across the pan, and as long as they keep moving they usually do OK.  But, if they stop the crust gives way, and the vehicle quickly sinks to its frame and all four wheels are stuck.  Not fun.

Pans are something to see.  We haven’t ever seen anything like them.  They give another illustration that things are NOT always what they seem.  What appears solid may be a clever trap. 

Much of modern society is like that.  What appears solid can trap us.  We need to know.  But more important than knowing is acting on what we know.

Scripture is full of warnings.  Now we have to act on what we know, lest we wind up totally stuck.