Walking in Balance

Searching for stoke

2020-05-11T11:18:00.000+02:00

I haven’t posted anything for a long time. Things change. I have less hair and greyer stubble. From where I write, I look due east over rooftops and then the sprawl of twinkling city lights to the distant line of mountains, etched hard and clear by the dawn. They are the mountains in which we used to live. For twenty-five years. Until the unrelenting tide of change swept that all away, with the force and violence of which it is perfectly capable.

But this is not about that. It is not about big stories. For it is often not the big stories that are important, but the little ones.

I awake, on my fifty-third birthday, in the most beautiful place on earth. The first of the pure white sandbanks are already exposed, with the tide still running out. The wind is from the north-west, the winter wind that brings rain and cold. But today it is soft and gentle, yet chilly. The dawn is silver-grey and unremarkable. None of the showy, warm tones of a typically African sunrise. Simpler. Cleaner. So that you have to look more intently to see the perfection.

When I am asked, later in the morning what I want for my birthday my reply is this: “ What I want most, on this day, is not to be rushed.”

But as it turns out, my fifty-third birthday is a day that offers more promise than it finally delivers. Despite everything I have around me that day, despite our trip to Heaven, and despite the silver potential that is held in the dawn. Or maybe, because of it.

Very few people know that this is the most beautiful place on earth. Even fewer know that it is at its best in the wintertime. People think: bright, turquoise water - pure, white sand - summer. They don’t think of perfection as coming in multiple shades of subdued grey.

But one person who knows the beauty of this place well, is Willie. And he knows it because eighty-two years of daily reinforcement is a very solid foundation for certainty.

Laurie Santos is a professor of happiness at Yale who teaches the most popular course ever offered at the university. Worlds away from Willie. From her I learn this: of the things that make our happiness, it is our relationships that probably matter most. No surprise there. But what is surprising to me, until I have time to reflect on my own experience, is this: It is the quality of every human relationship we experience that matters, and what makes the most difference, probably because we overlook them, is those small, fleeting interactions that happen every day - with the check out woman at the supermarket till, the regular dog walker that we pass in the park, the Uber driver. These are the low hanging fruits of happiness that we pass, often unaware, every day of our lives.

Although I had never deliberately sought those fruits before I recently learned of them, I know them, perhaps intuitively enough to strike up a conversation with Willie. And I suppose, if I am honest about my motivations, it includes a desire to prove to him my legitimacy in this place, that it is in my blood too. His beard is much whiter than mine. His hair much thicker, his face more wrinkled, exposed as it has been to much more sun and wind and salt. I am surprised by his eloquence. I am using the open door of his little fishing shack to shelter from the wind so that the flame, with which I am burning the ends of nylon cord, is not extinguished by the breeze. If I move further into the gloom, I am better sheltered for my task. The flame flares as the nylon takes, the smoke turns black. I twist and angle the cord to produce the desired result. The smell of it wafts somewhere in memory. I am crouched amongst the tools of Willie’s trade: corks strung on shell encrusted nylon rope, roughly piled nets, tangles of fishing line, yellow, plastic crates. All well-worn and infused with the scent of sun and wind and salt and of course fish, whose scales glint from the cracks between the rough, wooden floorboards.

His answer to one of my conversation starters, “So, how long have you been here?” is as striking as the whiteness of the sand here. “Eighty-two years”, he states. “That’s long”, I say, nodding my head slowly. My legitimacy pales in comparison. But I feel the need to distinguish myself from the new-comers, to squeeze a distinction between their fancy holiday houses and ours, to make my blood claim, admittedly somewhat thinner than his, for my fifty-three years to his eighty-two.

I doubt that he makes the distinction. It certainly would not be as important, or as clear to him, as it is to me. We chat as we work, the conversation punctuated to the gentle pace of this place by my coming and going between the Hobie cat, to tie knots, and the shelter of the fishing hut, with my next piece of cord. There is a quality of connection, it seems. We are each taking pleasure in simple labour. There are similarities and differences. Each of our labours is tied to our respective well beings, mine to the joy of sailing, and its many memories in this place, his to the economics of fish.

There is gratification in the unhurried completion of my task. I want to do it well, to do it thoroughly, led by the thought of how my father would have done it. It is, after all, his Hobie. And I am protecting its ageing hulls and trampoline from the ravages of sun and salt and wind as best I can. I am tying down its covers to protect it and withstand being ripped loose by the southeaster. I position the knots and the cord strategically, for tension. They will facilitate the loosening and retying of the covers. And I have made sure that the ends of each cord will not fray, by burning it in the shelter of Willie’s fishing shack.

Sandra has been sitting in the sand, her back against the Hobie, slightly sheltered from the chilly wind to enjoy some warmth from the winter sun. She loves this place like I do. She loves the wide sweep of its low topography, its muted colours, its expanse of calm water, its quiet.

When the Hobie task is done to my satisfaction, I return to the house. After a leisurely birthday breakfast, my sister calls. But here’s the problem. She’s standing on the point at Elands Bay. The surf is absolutely cooking.

Photo: Catherine Hofmeyr

Around my fifty-first birthday, I became a surfer again, after thirty years. Rediscovering the stoke is beautiful. Surfing is compelling for many reasons, the feeling of being out on the water, the immersion, the salty freshness, the surge of the ocean’s aliveness and power, and for me now, the opportunity to share it all with my son. But I have also become aware of one of the more profound reasons why surfing is so compelling. Nothing yanks you so beautifully into the immediacy of the present moment, as being on the face of a breaking wave.

I stopped surfing at age twenty one, due partly to pull and partly to push. The pull was a newfound passion for rock climbing. The push was the cold Cape water, the crowds and the associated aggression for waves. Part of the appeal of climbing was a community without any of that aggression.

Photo: Catherine Hofmeyr

When I find surfing again, I am pleasantly surprised by two things, the advances in wetsuit technology and the positive interactions I have with most of the surfers I come across. The vibe seems to be more about sharing the stoke and less about selfishly claiming waves. I think of our interactions along the Lamberts Strip. Conversations in the car parks and in the waves, brief friendships that grow over successive days of mutual searching for stoke. And of anticipating the coming lockdown, that we will all be in together. Have things changed, or have I changed? Maybe it's that I surf different, less crowded waves. Maybe it's that I am older.

When I was younger I hated the prickly sensation of pulling a T-shirt over the taught, salt-encrusted skin of my shoulders. I used to hate the resistance of bed linen against a salty body. And now I love it. I resist showering after a surf in order to enjoy the sensation of going to bed salty. Has the sensation changed, or have I?

Photo: Phoebe Lanz

There are definite similarities between surfing and climbing. They are both about the pursuit of freedom and independence and adventure. They are about awareness of movement simply for the joy it invokes. They are about immersion in the raw, awe-inspiring immediacy of the natural world. And to surfing and climbing, I would add skiing. But unfortunately, I was born in the wrong country for that.

Photo: Phoebe Lanz

But there is a difference that I notice between surfing and climbing. In surfing there are no numbers to pursue. A surfer’s motivation to ride a wave, unless it is during a competition, has nothing to do with any numerical measure. Surfers are motivated to ride waves for exactly the same reason that dolphins are. Because of the stoke. Pure and simple.

And there is, of course, another difference, that is somewhat annoying for the surfer. A particular rock climb can generally be relied upon to be there when you arrive at its base to climb it. Not so with a wave.

By my fifty-third birthday I am a surfer again. And the problem of being a surfer is that the lure of good waves is almost impossible to resist. In speaking to Tessa I am acutely aware that we are within striking distance of Elands Bay. But it's a long way to drive and it's already late. Sebastian of course is all youthful, uncautious go. I am not so sure. But then I remember a spot that is somewhat closer and if Elands is as good and as big as Tessa says it is, then this spot should be very worthwhile.

After a few minutes of anguished decision making, we are in the car and driving to Heaven. I cannot ignore the nagging sense that this is a poor choice for my day. I am worried that we will spend an hour driving only to arrive to bad surf. I worry, as we catch a view of the ocean and Sixteen Mile Beach, that the swell is not big enough, that the wind is making it messy. The flags that we pass at different points along the roadside, normally unnoticed, are each a source of worry. I worry that I am sacrificing what I really wanted for this day, and what was, before being lured away, in such easy reach.

But two hours later my choice feels like a brilliant one. We arrive at the end of the gravel road, to the first revelation of what we have driven an hour to reach. The parking lot is out on the edge, in the dunes beyond the neat, brick-edged roads, the ridiculous palm trees, the imposing, arched security gate, that we had to talk our way through. The wild Atlantic Ocean is glassy. It looks like there is swell. There is no one else out. And then a big set rolls through and produces a rush of unpacking, waxing boards, and suiting up.

As a surfer, to be out in the lineup in such good waves with only one other person, is an absolute dream. Theoretically, being out all alone would offer you the choice of every wave you want. But when you are alone in the lineup, the mind-sharks circle menacingly, just below the surface. It is amazing how effectively, just one companion in the lineup, keeps them safely submerged. So for balancing choice of wave against the discomforts of fear, one other person is the ideal number, especially if the other is a friend, or even better a son.

Sebastian and I are trading waves, whooping to each other as paddler and rider cross paths. The conditions are improving even more. It is big and clean and beautiful. Another surfer arrives in the parking lot, and around that time, I begin to mess up the takeoffs. By the time he is out in the line up with us, I am wiping out on many of the waves I paddle into. I don’t know why. Nothing seems to be working anymore. And an intense frustration begins to build.

I have messed up five perfect waves in a row, without riding a single one. Bash and I are alone at the back, when the big, silky bomb of the day aligns itself perfectly with the reef, peaking at just the right spot. Bash says: “It’s your birthday - you go.” And then he adds, “But just don’t blow it”.

A number of things peak on the crest of this high, moving wall of glassy, green power - the potential, the desire for satisfaction, the frustration. And it all depends on the split second of take-off. It steepens too fast. I hang in the lip too long. But I am on my feet, hands clawing at the wave face as I take the drop, desperate to hold it together this time.

I land awkwardly with the lip, off-balance. The emotional need to give vent to my uncontained frustration in an anguished and drawn-out wail is stronger than the discipline to fill my lungs before going under. And so I suffer, badly. Drilled in the white, churning water through the forests of kelp and over the reef. With lungs that burn through the endless seconds of delay before my head breaks the foaming, insubstantial surface. And now I am in the worst possible position in the impact zone, and the next wave of the set is just the same, as is the mistake of my lung-emptying wail of indignation as it hits me, and drills me under once more.

Your body doesn’t actually fight against it when you are in the washing machine of churning water with empty lungs. Surprisingly, it relaxes - perhaps an innate bodily wisdom of survival. But the message needs to get to your mind as well, which is less accepting. Despite your burning desire for the surface, you can only surrender to the superior power of the water, and wait patiently, without struggle, until your chance for the surface arises. Anything else is not only futile but dangerous.

I achieve this only with limited success. And only when forced to, by depth. At the surface, washing around in the foaming water amongst the kelp heads, I am all burning frustration and swearing indignation. I am the polar opposite of accepting surrender, too trapped in the swirling, frothy power of my suffering to let the ocean pound it out of me.

The surf sessions that have left the most fulfilment in me are those that I have used my best wave of the session to come out of the water on. But these are rare, for it is not easy to do. When you get your best wave, you immediately want another, and the temptation to paddle out again for it, is usually too strong to resist.

Today there is zero chance of that. I don’t come in after my beating under the set of the day. It takes a few more beatings with much the same response and result, before I give up. I don’t ride another wave.

If riding your best wave in, is a surf session high point, then paddling in without a wave is the low point. It is an admission of defeat. And just to add final insult to today’s defeat, I am unceremoniously upended in the vicious shore break and washed up the steep, mussel-strewn beach, my board dragging behind me on its leash. When I strip my wetsuit, while watching the other guy carve a long, running beauty down the point, I find it filled with mussel shells.

Photo: Phoebe Lanz

Daniel Kahneman proposes that the experiences we desire and seek out are not motivated by how we will experience them, but by how we will remember them. In the evening, when we are seated around the dinner table, Phoebe asks: “What was the best part of your day?” The father in me wants it to be the breakfast that my children poured dollops of effort and creamy scrambled eggs into. The surfer in me wants it to be one of the earlier waves of our session at Heaven. But the memory of them is defiled by how the session ended. Perhaps the best part of my day is right now, surrounded by the warmth of family and food in the privileged space of the holiday home we love. But I kind of know, deep down, that the best part of my day was not any of these. It was spent with a stranger, on the beach in the cold breeze, tying knots in pieces of nylon cord, of which I had burned each end, to stop them from fraying.

Fortunately, by the time I write this, during the Covid 19 lockdown, I have amassed more satisfying memories of surfing the wild West Coast that I have come to love, than those from my fifty-third birthday. In the days before lockdown, Tom, Sebastian, Shadow and I are dirt-bag camping along the Lamberts Strip, overdosing on sun and surf to sustain us into lockdown. Uppermost in my memory bank are two absolutely dreamy, evening sessions. Yo-yo’s is a friendly little reef off a sandy beach in the partial shelter of the Lamberts Bay harbour. We arrive in the parking lot in the late afternoon, just as the mushy, daytime conditions are transforming. No one else is out. Half an hour into the session the transformation is close to complete. The smoke from the chimney stack at the fish factory indicates a perfect, vertical zero on the Beaufort wind scale. The water is uncharacteristically warm. The ocean surface is an opulent, silky gold. And an exquisite little wave pitches off the apex of the reef and peels down it to the beach, with clockwork regularity. Not wanting it to end, I stay out into the darkness, until the only light in the sky comes to me across the water from the harbour.

Surfing is a strange drug. To be addicted to something that is so healthy, that is so beautiful, that is so much about connection with wellness of body and spirit, about immersion in the raw energy of the natural world cannot be bad, can it? And no, it is not - compared to an addiction to heroin, or consumerism, or porn. But it can be an addiction, nevertheless. And it has its downside. It sneaks a direct arrow shot through a chink in the armour of the human mind - straight into that soft spot that makes us wonder, with longing, whether we wouldn’t rather be in one of those empty, tropical, Indo line-ups that we see on Instagram, or simply on one of the other waves of this day, that we were out of position for, or even just the one after the one we got, that held up over the reef a little better.

And like with everything, social media makes it worse. We poor surfers are mercilessly bombarded with gorgeous photos and video edits that drive us crazy with the elusive, mistaken longing that there are waves out there that are more perfect than the wave that we are on.

Only the wind

2016-12-12T10:39:00.001+02:00

This is a story about Hendrik Mathys and how I came to meet him. Like all stories it relies on the unfolding of events in a particular sequence. Like all stories, it requires all of the events in that sequence to happen. None can be left out, neither the ones we might think of as good or lucky, nor the ones we might think of as bad or unlucky. They are all integral to the story, and to its particular end.

If the events, those two days, had unfolded differently, if any one of them had taken a different trajectory, I may never have met him. Would he have been worse off? Would I have been worse off? One cannot really say.

Hendrik Mathys is a Namaqualander. Born and bred. So are Jan Visser and his wife Nolene. But they are from very different parts of this vast, sparsely populated and intensely arid land that forms the north-western corner of our country. Hendrik is from the coast, where the cold, unfriendly Atlantic abruptly halts the spread of Namaqualand westwards. It is a bleak land, on the edge, between the scorching inland heat and the cold sea mist driven by an incessant southerly wind. From a utilitarian value perspective it has had only one redeeming feature: diamonds. Nowadays, perhaps there is a second: the southerly wind.

Jan Visser lives on a high, featureless plateau, far from the Atlantic and the diamonds. He has pretty much only the wind. And a layer of gritty, orange dust that it leaves behind.

Between Jan and Hendrik the land tumbles towards the coast in a series of large, rounded, granite lumps. That moment, when the road to Springbok has crested the edge of the plateau, and begun its descent, and I am first amongst the granite, is a moment I love. Suddenly, after miles of nothing, the land becomes enticing. To be at its best, it should be either early or late in the day, when the sun's angle is low, when the granite protrudes high above its shadows, and the light is rich enough to colour the bleakness with allure. It is more likely to be late in the day than early. For if it were still early, from where would you have travelled that day? There is very little that is close to this place.

It was in the lumpy granite landscape, outside Springbok, that I met Hendrik Mathys. But we are not yet there, in the story. First I met Jan Visser. At the time he was weighing sheep. I tell him my problem. That I need help. He acknowledges it with a nod. Says he will make a plan. And standing there in his shorts, taking drags of a cigarette and weighing sheep, he looks like a man who will. But first he must finish weighing his sheep. I relax and shift into the shade of a wall and watch. It feels OK now to take a long slug from the water bottle I am carrying. The water has lasted long enough.

There are four men, two coloured farm labourers in blue overalls and beenies, and two white farmers in rugby shorts and caps. Each has a clear role. I watch. No one speaks, except to the sheep. And to give a single word count each time. “Three”. “Two”. Jan's cigarette stays in his mouth, gets replaced by another when it has burned out.

The two farm labourers hound sheep in batches from a holding pen into a narrow fenced passage forcing them into single file. The front one suddenly finds itself a reluctant leader with only one real option, to head down the wire corridor towards the unknown. But there is often a moment, when it catches sight, in its large, yellow, panic stricken eyes, the possibility of a different option: to back up. There are no sheep dogs around. The men are used to sheep. There is a brief pile up, then they shove and scold loudly from behind and the lead sheep surges forward through the door, which is held aloft by the second, smoking farmer, onto the caged scale.

At first I do not know that this is what they are doing. I imagine injections, something to justify the panic in the sheep's eyes, but I can see nothing actually happening to the sheep. And so it takes me a while, standing, watching, to work it all out. The man whose job it is to lift and drop the gates states the number of sheep on the scale. He lights another cigarette. Jan records something on his papers atop the upturned, green fuel drum that serves as a table. He nods. The exit gate is lifted, and the sheep tumble out to join their already freed companions on the other side.

The number of sheep on the scale is dependent on how many decide, in that moment, to rush headlong behind the leader into the cage, poking their heads out at desperate angles between the welded bars. Sometimes a sheep is only half way in, squashed up against the others, and then the labourer who is in front must either shove it in further, or drag it out backwards.

The cycle repeats itself. Shadows shorten as the sun climbs in the sky. Wind crosses the plains unobstructed. The number of sheep in the entrance pen gradually diminishes, as those in the exit one grow. It is probably unfair to evaluate animals in terms of human characteristics. But it does appear that sheep were not bred for their intelligence, and that the metaphorical description of following blindly, is indeed applicable. If I were to have a choice as to the life form into which I would be reincarnated, it would not be as a sheep.

Years ago, at the beginning of my career, it was the diamonds that brought me to this part of the world. Now it is the wind. I follow the wind and the sun around our country making assessments of the agricultural potential of land on which renewable energy facilities are being planned. It is work that takes me into far flung parts of our country, that few people ever go or have a need to. I love that about it.

To say this plateau is featureless, while almost true is not entirely so. It is the perspective of one who lives among mountains. When there are no mountains, the search for interest in the landscape is harder. Mostly my eyes are drawn to elevation. But in this landscape I must look to the opposite of mountains. Mountains stand out in stature and relief. But in this horizontal landscape, the only features that can stand out, distinguish themselves by being lower and even flatter than the rest. And they glisten white in the sun. Salt pans dot the landscape, providing relief from sameness, providing appeal and beauty because they stand out, because they are other.

When I have sufficiently assessed the proposed wind farm site, driven across its wide, unchanging surface, walked across its veld, scratched in its earth, I continue my journey north to another site. On the way I shred a tyre. Once you have had one puncture, you become very aware of your tyres, of the looming danger of another puncture. It is like once you've seen a snake when out walking.

I pass a salt pan close to the road and decide to walk out onto its glistening surface. I leave the car and the aircon running. The hygroscopic salt sucks all moisture from the environment towards it. It oozes just below the surface. My feet sink in a little as I walk, with a dull crunching. Visually it is not unlike a snowy landscape. But in contrast to the lightness and altitude of snow, it has an intensely sunken and weighty feel. It carries a charge of corrosiveness. I stick my finger in and taste it. Salt. Then I return to the car, check the tyres and continue.

One of the disadvantages of travelling alone along the back roads of South Africa are the gates. One must stop the car, get out, open the gate, get back in, drive through, stop the car, get out, close the gate, get back in. On a long road with many gates it becomes tedious. I have heard of a farmer who designed his gates to allow him to bump them open and drive through, after which they would swing closed behind him. I have also heard that certain bakkies have a low idle gear that allows the farmer to jump out and open the gate before the bakkie drives itself through. I am not sure if this is true. You would have to be pretty confident about getting the gate open efficiently. Many has been the time that I have struggled to figure out what system holds the chain and how to loosen it. You wouldn't want the pressure of your bakkie butting up against the gate while you figure that out. It’s bad enough when you are with the farmer, and you're trying to dispel any impression that you are a townie, ignorant about farm life. And I consider myself to be pretty proficient at gates. I have opened many in the course of my work.

At the next gate I check the tyres again. The front left one is going down. Shit! I do not know how quickly, but I decide not to waste any time. I hurry away. How far can I make it? Can I reach the junction with the bigger road?

But by the next gate it is almost completely flat. The need for any hurry evaporates into the hot, dry air. I open the gate and pull slowly through it, to the side of the road. The radio loses its station. I sit in the vast silence. I walk around. There is only the wind. After a while I notice that a second tyre is going flat.

I am not particularly stressed. There seems little point. It is easier to reach a state of acceptance, I think, when you have absolutely no choice. And when no one, including yourself, is acting against you. This is simply how it is. I have only two working tyres. I am in one of the least frequented parts of the entire country, hundreds of miles from the nearest small town. There is no cell phone signal. I am alone. Without the goodwill of another human being, I can go no further.

I think that I am somewhat comforted by this: the stories of our lives have always gone somewhere. Although Hendrik Mathys or Nolene Visser may not entirely agree with that. My story has never left me stranded along a desolate road somewhere, for good. There has always been a next part to the story, and I think we have a sense of that. And that sense provides hope and comfort. We just don't know, in the present, in which direction that next part of our story is to be found. But of course stories also go somewhere until they don't any more. Until that is the end.

My task is to find another human being in this desolate landscape. I have a choice: to wait for one to come to me, or to go in search of one. Scanning the road behind me and in front of me, to the distant horizons, brings little hope of one coming to me. I know that I passed an abandoned farmhouse, something that is fairly common around here, several kilometres ago. The last place that I know of, where there would likely be people, would be at the construction site of a new wind farm, but that is some seventy kilometres back. I know there is a junction of this road, with another road up ahead. Ahead seems to offer more promise.

In terms of the unfolding of our life stories, there are no wrong decisions or right decisions. One could go so far as to say there are not even good decisions or bad decisions. There are only decisions that take us down one road or down another, opening further decisions down the way. A decision can only ever be as good as the information that is available to one at the time of making it. And the information is always restricted by one’s perspective.

As I walk, the land always appears to be cresting very slightly, somewhere ahead of me, offering me a wider outlook on my predicament. It is something I crave, elevation above the flat, featureless expanse surrounding me, a high point which may even offer cell phone reception, or perhaps the sight of human habitation in the distance. But it is a tease. It never does. It stays constantly flat, curving probably only with the curvature of the earth.

Off to my right something is glinting in the setting sun, just above the earth's curve. I strain to make it out. I am sorry that I have left my binoculars in the car. How likely is it that it indicates the presence of another human? Or is it merely another abandoned farm house, or a far flung stock watering point? I decide that if I pass a turning to it, I will assess how recently or frequently a vehicle has driven towards it. It seems better to continue along the road towards the junction than to strike out across the veld. I never pass a turning to it.

In retrospect it is easy to see that my expectations of the road junction are too high. And so, yes, I am disappointed on reaching it, after about an hour's walk. There is nothing there. Nothing to distinguish it from where I have just come. It provides no increased sense of security, no increased hope. Just two desolate roads happening to cross each other, each seeking different points, somewhere in the dark beyond the distant horizon.

Being at a crossroads, I suppose I now have double the chance of someone passing by. But double zero is still zero. I also now have three choices as to which way to continue. There is very little on which to base the choice. One road has a gate and what I think is the name of a farm on it – something about dunes. The other leads to Pofadder, and in the opposite direction to Kliprand, both of which I know to be about a hundred kilometres distant. I climb over the gate and continue along the road behind it. There are vehicle tracks on it, but in a world without rain to erase tracks, it is impossible to tell how recent they are.

The dark is an advantage because any human habitation should show up as a light from miles away. But after about an hour of walking along this road, there is still no sign of any light, from horizon to horizon. I decide I must turn back. I am now also thirsty, and sorry that I have brought no water with me. I think about how much water I have in the car. It is not a lot.

Earlier in my life, being in a dark place such as this, alone, might have held a certain amount of fear. But with age I have learnt that there is little to fear in darkness, in emptiness, in solitude. I have come to feel at home in such places. These are not dangerous places. These are not the places in our lives that we need to fear.

The constancy of the landscape frees me from being anywhere in particular. The moon has set and I am completely afloat in the featureless dark, never closer to or further away from anything other than where I am. Always on the revolving crest of the earth. With just my footsteps measuring the irrelevance of time and distance. And the beauty of it is not lost on me.

But there is a human measure, other than my pace lengths, imposed on the land: the long straight lines of fences that cut across it, which along the road means gates. After some time has passed since the last gate, I become increasingly aware that the next gate will be nearing. I do not want to stumble into it in the dark. And I seem to develop a helpful sense of its being there, before, at the last moment of approach, I am able to see it.

After the third gate I know I am nearing the car. And I am passing the place where, before sunset, I saw a reflection in the distance. I strain my eyes for a light. There is nothing. But because the reflection was from very near the horizon, sometimes above it, sometimes below it, it is difficult to know from where exactly the place may be visible again. I keep walking, my eyes willing something to appear from the darkness. There! There is something. A dim, distant light. Definitely a light. I seek the best vantage point and stare. But it is a very distant light, a slowly rising star. I walk on, searching still. And then there is another. This one is closer, brighter. Again I seek the best vantage. This light does not rise slowly into the sky. It is a confirmation, the presence of human habitation on this vast empty plateau, hope of the help that I need. But right now I am tired. I need to sleep. In the morning I will walk across the veld towards whatever I have seen.

Because of what I have seen, I walk with my cell phone torch held high above my head, pointing towards the light. I know that in a place like this, lights moving in the veld, if seen, will send alarms of stock theft. This will bring bakkies out into the night. My aim is to bring help to me, rather than have to go and seek it. And with the same aim, once I reach it, I turn the car's headlights on and off periodically. But the veld around me remains empty.

It is not comfortable sleeping in a car. I begin in the front passenger seat, then try the back. It is cold. I start the car, leave it idling and run the heater at maximum, until the air inside warms. I am able to sleep for a while until I wake again, cold and needing to run the heater once more. At first light I am up. I want to use the cool of morning to cross the veld.

I have more information than the first time I set out. I can make better decisions. I empty my red travel bag and pack in my water, hat, GPS, binoculars, wallet, cell phone, my only warmer top and a few rusks, the only food I have. I do not know for how long I might be away.

As the distance slowly lessens to my destination, things become discernible that hold promise. The first is dust rising, proof of some movement, hopefully a vehicle, but hopefully not a departing one. The second is tall trees. If there are tall trees, it suggests a degree of establishment that holds promise. And as I get closer, the various parts of a working farmyard begin to distinguish themselves.

People's places of habitation offer a different view when approached from behind, rather than from the side that is presented to the outside world. There is no obvious point to approach. No point of welcome. Discarded things are scattered there. Old farming implements, bundles of barbed wire, a few wrecked and rusted vehicles.

There is someone moving in the sandy shade behind a building, an old man. He has not yet seen me. “Good morning”, I say in Afrikaans through the fence. He looks quizzically at me. “I am stuck. Three flat tyres. Out on the road.” I gesture behind me. He points off in the other direction. The baas van die plaas, the boss of the farm, is out there. I must speak to him.

And so this is how I meet Jan Visser, weighing sheep. He does not look particularly surprised to see me, which I find odd. Surely he cannot get many visitors here, especially out of the south, across the veld? Once my problem has been presented and acknowledged, I relax and shift into the shade of a wall and watch. It feels OK now to take a long slug from the water bottle I am carrying. The water has lasted long enough.

When the weighing of sheep is finished, I follow Jan back to his house. Coming from Stellenbosch, I recognise, sets up certain romantic expectations about the graciousness and character of farm houses. But I have discovered that when one leaves the Boland, for the vast interior of our country, few real farm houses are like that. Most are utilitarian and ugly and have not persisted long enough to acquire any charm. Most serve as a refuge from an obligation to spend long work days in the harsh, outdoor conditions. Views are often inwards towards televisions. Makeshift practicality rules over style.

Jan and his wife don't talk much, or make particularly much of my situation. My problems, I suppose, are simply one of many problems that are a fact of life in a place like this. They share some stories of others who have suffered similarly. An elderly couple who couldn't walk for help and so waited in their car for several days until a neighbouring farmer eventually passed.

“Good thing it wasn't the summer”, Jan says. “You can't walk across the veld here in the summer.”

“Good thing it wasn't the winter either”, his wife adds. “You would have frozen through the night.”-

Jan seems incredulous that I hadn't walked to the light last night.

“If you are lucky enough to see a light out here, you must walk towards it. There are not a lot of lights out here.”

“I know there aren't”, I say.

After a brisk mug of instant coffee, Jan and I go to my car. He is not the kind of guy to stand around and deliberate, and he has tools to match. In no time the car is standing on rocks and we are returning to the farm with two of my tyres that have a chance of repair. I am at pains to play a part in the action, to get down in the dust under the car and heave rocks and wheels. It would be easy to remain a bystander, but I feel a need to assert a manly competence, to prove that I am not an incapable city dweller.

I am always slightly embarrassed about and hesitant to elaborate to men like Jan, what exactly my role is on their farms. I am out here to asses this land. But I come from the Boland with its thatched, white-walled farm houses with sloping, green lawns and oak trees, with its pretty patterns of neatly pruned vines spread across rolling foothills under hazy-blue mountains. I live in a world of books and theories and pavement coffee shops. What do I know of land like this? I feel like an imposter. What I know about is how to access data and structure reports, how to satisfy bureaucratic requirements. But in truth I know very little about this land, the way that Jan does.

Is it not an irony of our society that I earn an easy livelihood from the same land that men like Jan scratch out a hard survival? Is it not an irony of our economy that it mostly services the elaborate, urban trimming we have fashioned around our existence, allowing us to pay top dollar for lightly braised lamb cutlets in red wine coulis, whose live weight was first recorded on an upturned green fuel drum under a relentless Namaqualand sun?

The tyres are wheeled into the high-roofed store, where an assortment of farming essentials, tractors and family vehicles shelter from the sun. The compressor is started. Punctures are plugged. I mostly watch, as do the two farm labourers, rolling cigarettes. A tyre fitment shop in Aggeneys, some one hundred kilometres away, is contacted. The availability of a suitable replacement tyre is confirmed.

“Do you want to risk the drive there without a spare?” Jan asks.

I do, and so him and his wife explain to me more or less where those few, isolated farmhouses are, along my route, and so in which direction I must walk, if I get another flat. When I am ready to depart, Nolene seems to suddenly become more talkative, perhaps sensing that a rare opportunity for conversation is receding. I am shown a surprising number of very new-born kittens in various corners of the room. There is a daughter at boarding school in Springbok. I learn that Nolene is from Namaqualand, but not from this part. They have only recently moved onto this farm. That explains something about the house to me. But there is a sense of something more - perhaps a reluctance to settle in this place, a grievance with the gritty, orange dust, with the drought that has persisted for six years.

I make it to Aggeneys without incident and am rewarded with a new spare tyre, assurance that the plugs Jan fitted are still good, a toasted sandwich breakfast and a coffee milkshake. The restaurant attached to the OK Grocer is air conditioned. By this time of the morning it is already hot in Aggeneys. Refreshed and re-equipped I am now good to assess a second site, and so embark on yet another long drive to nowhere, on a dirt road, with many gates.

I finish later in the day, and am relieved, at last, to turn in the direction of home. I crest the edge of the plateau and start the descent into the lumpy granite landscape towards the coast. I enjoy crossing the great landscapes of our country, I like the distance, the space. I like those parts of the land best, where its bones lie close to the skin, where there is no fat, where there is emptiness. The distance that stands between me and the comfort of home offers more than just a hindrance to overcome, it is a space in which thoughts can wander unencumbered. It is an uncomplicated time of aloneness, free of any competing demands other than the simple need to move forwards. And within its constraints, I am entirely free to do and think as I choose. Time like this allows me, unhurriedly, to make sense of things, for myself. I settle in to the journey. I have not yet met Hendrik Mathys.

He is standing across the road from me outside Springbok, a small, neatly dressed man, older than me, at a road construction stop and go. Waiting time: ten minutes. But he has waited most of the day. His white collared golf shirt says something about education, in blue letters.

Hendrik, I learn, also worked once, like I did, in the diamond mines at Kleinzee. Perhaps we once even stood one behind the other in the queue to exit the mining area. De Beers held tightly to their diamonds, with a security dominated culture that I found uncomfortable. Once entered, nothing but personnel could exit the mining area, ever again. The risk of diamonds hidden beyond security's control was too high. All personnel went through security on the way in and security on the way out. You were channelled in the exit queue down a passageway, a little like sheep to the scale, with observing eyes concealed behind one-way glass, and with the niggling fear that arises in such impersonally accusatory environments: what if a diamond has somehow found its way into my pocket? At the end of the passage you were directed by way of lights and some indiscriminate algorithm within the security machinery, which decided, irrespective of your station in life and on the mine, to send you through the X-ray or not. If you wanted to smuggle diamonds out you had to gamble with the chance afforded by the health requirement that personnel could not be subjected to X-rays every time they exited the mine. Maybe Hendrik and I passed through there together, and were assessed, one after the other, by those lights, which registered no difference between us.

Now he is asking me for a lift. There are a few things that are triggered for me when faced with the choice to pick up a hitch-hiker. The first is probably safety. There is an element of risk, letting a stranger into your vehicle. Who are they? What might they want to take, other than a ride? Hendrik is small. I reckon I could overpower him if it came to that.

When I was younger I hitched a lot. I traversed long distances across the country with relative ease. And so it appeals to me to pay that forward. Hitch-hiking makes complete social sense. It contributes to a better world. I have something that can easily be shared with someone who needs it, at very little cost to me. From that perspective, it is a no brainer.

There is however a relatively small cost, and part of my reluctance to pick up people definitely relates to it. I probably use danger as an excuse, when it is really this cost that often puts me off. A passenger will impose on my unencumbered freedom of thought. I will be forced to make conversation. In my hitching days, people giving me a lift often justified it with the remark that it would provide someone to talk to on the long road. That is not a motivation I relate to.

Of course the risk can be real. For both Sandra and I this choice never fails to surface the memory of the hitch-hiker to whom we gave a lift one night from Ceres. That time I realised too late that the untidy blue marks on his arms were jail gang tattoos. We were both completely spooked, driving along dark deserted roads with him working his way further and further through from the back of the bakkie into the cab. Luckily the sliding window between us was a small one. We grabbed the first opportunity we had to off-load him in a well-lit and peopled place, at the tunnel toll gate. It felt like a lucky escape. All he had managed thus far was to rifle through our bags in the load bed and pocket a few items.

When I WhatsApp Sandra to fill her in on my homeward progress, I add that I have a hitch-hiker with me. She responds with:

“Yay. Can't wait to see you. Send photo of hitch-hiker so if he a serial killer I have a photo of who to go after.” And then she adds, “Remember the guy we picked up in Ceres?”

I reply: “Indeed. This one very different. I hope!”

But I send her a photo, just in case.

All of these considerations probably run through my head in the few seconds I have to respond to Hendrik's request. I rely on my gut to process them accurately. Or maybe it is simply that he asks me directly. And so how could I, with empty seats next to me and behind me, refuse him.

“Sure”, I say. “Get in.”

He had asked me if I were going to Vanrhynsdorp, about half of the way to Cape Town.

“That's not too bad”, I think. “I will still have half the drive to myself.”

But it turns out he is actually going all the way to Cape Town. To hospital. I am still checking him out. Not committing myself further than I am already committed. There is always a hospital involved, I think. Or a funeral.

He explains that he just did not want to get a lift less than half way. He left Port Nolloth early this morning with an organised lift in a delivery vehicle that regularly does the trip north from Cape Town. But after it had done a delivery detour there had been a mix up at the stop and go. The single lane traffic through the roadworks prevented it from being able to stop and pick him up again. He has waited there most of the day. And in fact was about to give up and head back to Port Nolloth, to perhaps try his luck another day.

He has two children. One works for Coca Cola marketing in Upington. One works as a tour guide in Namibia. Hendrik worked for De Beers, during the time I was there. Then for customs control at Vioolsdrift, and has also spent time driving blood samples down this road for analysis in Cape Town. He knows by heart, the distances between each town. When I stop and check Google Maps to determine if I need to fill up with fuel in this town or the next, he informs me with confidence that it is only 23 kilometres to Klawer. Google Maps agrees.

“And it is 444 kilometres to Cape Town”, he says. Around the corner we pass a sign reading, Cape Town 444 km.

He is travelling to hospital in Cape Town, not because he is currently ill, but because he requires official proof of a previous medical intervention and his related condition, for the purposes of a medical cover claim. It seems like a long trip for an old man to make, hitch-hiking, simply to get an official document. But it is probably not simple. And I am sure the associated money is of sufficient importance to him to be worth it.

Hendrik's wife died last year of asthma. “I am sorry”, I say, and then add, “I also have asthma.” But I am thinking to myself, “I am unlikely to die of it.”

I am taking a greater and greater liking to Hendrik. I buy him supper in Klawer. He eats some of it. Folds the rest into a Wimpy serviette for later.

The more I learn of Hendrik's life, the more I recognise something. I recognise the similarity of his situation, when I met him alongside the N7, to the situation I was in, only this morning. Perhaps an intuitive sense of this, influenced my gut assessment. The more we talk, the more pleased I am that I picked him up.

There is a similarity in the two situations, but there is also an important difference. I am white. Hendrik is coloured. That difference is still important in South Africa. And there is another closely related difference. I am well-off. Hendrik is poor.

What I learn most from the hours I spend with Hendrik is this: my wealth, my whiteness, its education, afford me an air-conditioned bubble in which to comfortably traverse the mostly harsh terrain of our land. Hendrik's whole life, and that of many others like him, is comparable to my recent experience. There is no air-conditioned bubble of comfort. Survival depends entirely on the offer of another's good will. But whereas my discomfort lasted less than twenty four hours, it is the ongoing reality of people like Hendrik's life, every day. I know also that I would have approached Jan Visser's farm house, from the back across the veld, with much greater trepidation, were I not white.

From the time I first saw him standing on the N7, there is something about Hendrik that makes me think of Nelson Mandela. There is a similar look, perhaps something in the way he talks, even perhaps in the way he listens. I am most aware of it when, at the end of our journey together, he takes my arm to steady himself, and walks stiffly, holding it, into the restaurant at the Winelands Engen One Stop, on the outskirts of the city. The long journey has been hard on his hip. As we walk he tells me, that as a Namaqualander, what he would really like now is a pot of black Rooibos tea.

At this late hour, no one else is in the restaurant, except the staff. The pot of tea will allow Hendrik to wait here inside, where it feels safer and is warmer. He plans to try and reach the hospital first thing in the morning, before it opens. If he can be done there early, he can start back home to Port Nolloth before it is too late in the day. I pay for the tea and we say our farewells. I look back at him through the glass as I get into my vehicle, expecting to catch his eye. But he has lifted the lid of the teapot, and is looking down into it, stirring slowly.

Later, back in the comfort of my normal life, I tell a friend about my unwanted adventure of being stranded with three flat tyres in the middle of nowhere. His response is: “What a privilege. To be in such a place.” And you know what? He is right. Four kilometres along the turning off the Kliprand Pofadder road, towards Dikpenswerke. Out of my bubble of comfort.

The constancy of the landscape frees me from being anywhere in particular. The moon has set and I am completely afloat in the featureless dark, never closer to or further away from anything other than where I am. Always on the revolving crest of the earth. With just my footsteps measuring the irrelevance of time and distance. Free from any illusion of being independent, of being in control. And the beauty of it, of all of it, is not lost on me.

Homecoming

2015-05-28T11:20:00.000+02:00

It is a good story, worth writing down, I think, even after all these years. And maybe it has taken all these years for me to discover the voice with which I want to tell it. I am thinking of the story because I am driving the road along which it draws to an end, twenty six years ago. It was a road then, that lead home, but no longer does, a road that I have travelled thousands of times throughout my life, but then was travelling for the first time in two years. I was returning home. I was twenty two years old. Twenty two seemed older, then.

It is a beautiful road, probably one of the most beautiful in the world, certainly for a city. To the east are the vertical, grey, sandstone walls of the apostle peaks, strung out to the south of Table Mountain. To the west is the open Atlantic Ocean. As I drive I am one minute craning my neck to scan the cliff lines above, the next I am gazing outwards, over the wide expanse of ocean.

This drive is always beautiful. It is beautiful on those rare, still days when the ocean is at rest, the kelp heads gently rising and sinking again, almost imperceptibly, below a glassy surface. It is beautiful when the south-easter cloud is tumbling from the cliffs like a waterfall towards the road, and white horses gallop to the horizon. It is probably most beautiful though, when buffeted by winter, when the ocean releases the full power it has amassed, between here and Antarctica, onto the jumble of granite rocks below.

I pass the place where, one winter's morning when we were kids, we awoke to find the bulk of the Antipolis dashed on these rocks, with its bows almost cutting across the road. It is now nothing but dark shadows below the surface, visible only on those days when the ocean is calm and bright.

I have also been reminded of this story because I have been contemplating how different the world was then. This story happened before the world wide web. It happened even before fax machines. In comparison to the kids who travel today, when we left, we were cut off from all but very irregular communication with our kin. This story would have taken a very different course in the age of Facebook and WhatsApp. An experience such as I had is no longer available to this generation. I wonder if there is any loss in that, or if it is simply a difference. I wonder if we faced more risk, or if we just had less insurance.

Perhaps there is a third reason I am thinking of this story: because our own history is a small, comfortable sanctuary from insignificance.

I arrived in Istanbul at age twenty two, having hitched alone across northern Greece. I had been alone since Sandee left. We had parted in Athens, she to board a plane home to college in the US, at the end of her summer vacation, me to continue travelling east. We met in a restaurant in Chelsea, London where we both worked, each seeing in the other something that made us want to be together. We travelled across Europe, getting as far as Greece before our time together ran out. When we parted in Athens, neither of us planned it to be the last time we would ever see each other.

Twenty six years later we are friends on Facebook. I have watched, in the photos she posts, her daughters growing. Sometimes there are photos of them that remind me a lot of Sandee when I knew her.

For our travels across Europe, I had entered the Netherlands from the UK on a British passport, borrowed from a friend in London. The photograph of Richard, with blond hair and freckles, in his early teens could just as well have been me. I memorized his birth date and the names of his parents carefully. I was tired of the inconvenience of travelling on my South African passport in the days of Apartheid when we were the perahia of the world. Simple solution to a complicated bureaucratic problem. Not only did it tremendously ease travel across countries, it provided a little buzz of adrenalin going through immigration at Schiphol airport to start us on our way. After an incident free start I became comfortable with being Richard at international borders. All the way to Greece. Sandee carried my South African passport. It wouldn’t have looked good if a baggage search had brought up a second passport, more obviously mine by a more recent photograph, but bearing a different name and nationality. It was liberating to be free of the burden of my country’s passport, but as I was to discover, having a South African passport is better than having none.

Like in all stories there are small things that, on their own, might be insignificant, but when woven with the other elements of the story, can significantly determine its course. This is one of those: Because I was travelling on Richard’s passport, I didn’t want to be carrying travellers cheques in my real name, the only option we had in those days for safely carrying travel funds. So Sandee carried all my money in traveller's cheques in her name. Only when she was leaving, did we realise that this was a problem. The outcome was that, from Athens on, I carried all the money I had in American Dollars cash. I suppose I could have re-purchased travellers cheques in my real name. But it would have incurred unfavourable currency charges in Athens, and I did not see the cash particularly as a problem. After all my risk management was informed largely by youthful naivety and optimism. The youthful has changed since then, but my risk management hasn't really.

I could only use Richard’s passport for so long. He would need it, so when Sandee left she took it back to him. As I rode the Athens city bus north to the end of its line, I was not only alone, I had reverted, for official purposes, to being Johann Lanz, national of South Africa. On the northern outskirts of Athens, I started hitching to the monasteries of Meteora. I am often drawn to a place by a single, captivating image of it. I think it was thus with Meteora, probably a photograph in the guidebook. It is an incredible place. I still have some photographs that I took there.

I was travelling very light. No tent, no cooking equipment, no mattress. I had a roll up grass mat on which I slept. At the camp site I met no other English speakers. I felt lonely. I walked among the monasteries and I remember getting a lift with an East European family, who spoke no English, and were on holiday in a small car. I remember that they included me in all of their family photographs. I have thought about that since, the fact that I must appear in a family photograph album in a home somewhere in Eastern Europe, looking young, uncertain? Hopeful?

From Meteora I went to the Vikos Gorge. I remember it as beautiful but I couldn’t remember specifics, so I looked it up on Google. Viewing the images, I recognise exactly what drew me there. It would draw me still. Amongst memories of monasteries perched above steep canyon walls, a clear, cold spring, high mountain shepherd dogs with a vicious reputation, and narrow, winding, stone-cobbled streets, my most significant memory is this. Where the official hike ended in the mountain village of Papingo, there was an access road out. But the gorge continued, to where I didn’t know but it drew me far more powerfully than the exit road. So I said farewell to the British hiker with whom I had walked some days, but who was less certain than me about the allure of the unknown.

When I descended from the village into the canyon, I was followed by a herd of goats. They stuck with me through the tangle of forest trees along the river, until the gorge narrowed and I had to wade through water to round a bend. It turned out that the wilder part of the canyon drew others inclined to such things, as it had drawn me. I noticed a couple, clearly wishing to stay hidden amongst the trees, I spent some time with naked Scandinavian water nymphs (and their boyfriends, unfortunately), and then with a Greek backgammon player who told me where the canyon ended. I felt at home here.

When our supplies were finished, the backgammon player and I walked out. The magic of the canyon disappeared and was replaced by a dry, dusty plain traversed by a lonely tar road that would take me to Istanbul. The journey over the next few days was uneventful. When it got dark, I slept on my grass mat near the side of the road, and hitched again in the morning. Once I crossed the border into Turkey I remember rows of ugly hotel developments strung along the coast, always in various stages of messy construction.

The old centre of Istanbul, around the Blue Mosque, is an enchanting city space. I checked into a cheap backpackers dorm, keeping all my valuables with me in a daypack, rather than leaving them with my baggage, then set out to experience the city. I was intoxicated by the vibrancy and the exoticness. I liked Turkey immediately.

In retrospect I would say that I continued to like Turkey the whole, long time I was there. The people, but for four Istanbuli youths, and some officious policemen, were amazingly friendly. The place was vibrant, the food was colourful and tasty, the city intriguing and frenetic, the antiquity incredible, the wide rural landscapes to the south and east, inspiring. There were two things, though, that I came to hate about Turkey. These were the telecommunications infrastructure and the plumbing. I had numerous run-ins with both and I never won.

Turkey had a mixture of Asian and western toilets. I found little appeal in the exoticness of Asian ones - I doubt they can ever be a hit with people raised on western ones. I think the western ones were fairly new in Turkey then and it seemed that Turkish plumbers did not yet understand some important principle of their functioning. The cisterns operated as a dribbling, purely decorative appeasement to western sensibilities. During my time in Turkey I came to loathe smokers who threw their cigarette butts in the toilet bowls.

But on my first evening in Istanbul I had few concerns. From the Sultan Amhed Park, I was enchanted by views of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, with the sparkling city lights as backdrop. I remember drinking salted yoghurt with a young Turk at a street café. I remember chatting to locals, being struck by their friendliness. I abandoned myself into the beguiling flow of the evening as it proceeded from the park through a festival in the palace gardens. I was charmed by the welcoming generosity of my new friends who paid my entrance fee.

We exited the noise and lights of the festival far from where we had entered it. There was an offer of a ride in their taxi back to my hostel and some ruse to get me out of it on the way. I was completely unalert. I was not a difficult victim. Once the taxi had pulled off, the street was dark and empty. The mood changed very quickly. One of them squeezed my throat from behind. Another pressed a knife into my stomach. “If you make a noise I will keel you.” I remember, he said it like that: “keel”. They seemed nervous. Perhaps I was one of their first victims. It was over very quickly. The noise of their running footsteps faded. I was alone in the middle of the night on an empty street in a strange part of Istanbul. And all the valuables I possessed were gone.

There was human kindness at the corner of one of the dark streets. He was smoking on a step outside his house. I think he had heard them running past. He spoke no English. He organised a taxi to take me back across the city to the backpackers.

And so I awoke to my first morning in Istanbul knowing nobody and without a cent to my name. I was without a passport or any form of ID, the national of a country that had no diplomatic ties with the country in which I was. This is not an enviable situation, but it is a memorable one.

When hunger set in, food became my first priority and then later a place to sleep. For both of these my only option was to beg for money. I told my sad tale, mostly to fellow travellers. They eyed me with suspicion. Some believed me, some did not. Some gave me money, some did not. At first I lived a meal to meal and night to night existence, unsure what to do in the long term. I harboured some hope of assistance from Thomas Cook, I think to do with some old travellers cheques that I might still have had in my own name. I even tried the British Embassy. After all I had recently travelled on a British passport! But they were not interested.

To get to Thomas Cook, I had to travel across the city. It was too far to walk but I had no bus fare. So I begged for the fare in the bus queue. An American traveller paid my fare. We chatted a bit. I think he may have bought me lunch.

Thomas Cook could not help me either, but I did meet someone, one of the employees, who was at least sweet and sympathetic, could speak English fluently and she knew how things worked in Turkey.

I do not get on well with bureaucracy. Perhaps some of my distaste for it was established during the long, frustrating weeks that followed. The intricacies of extracting myself from Turkey without a passport slowly revealed themselves during strained telephonic communication with the closest South African embassy, in Athens. It was this simple: they would post me a temporary passport application form. I must fill it in, attaching a Turkish police report proving the theft of my previous passport, and affixing passport photographs to the form, in the appropriate place, that were officially police stamped to prove that they were of the sender. Then they would process my application in Athens and post back to me, a temporary passport.

In this day and age of instant communication it is difficult to think “post” in such a situation. But there it was. That was all that was available.

Being reliant on the Turkish public telephone system on the streets of Istanbul for my international communications with Athens, was perhaps my greatest frustration of all. Public telephones in those days required that you feed coins into a slot. I don’t know if they still do. It has been a long time since I have used a public telephone. For international calls you had to feed the coins in fast. If you slowed too much during the call, you were cut off. You were also frequently cut off mid-call for a host of other reasons, inaccessible within a tangle of copper wires somewhere deep within the confusion of the Turkish telecommunications system. It was not always possible to re-connect again that day, from that telephone booth or from any of the others that I came to frequent. Getting through was a pretty hit and miss affair.

The first time I called the embassy, it took a while to track down someone who could speak sufficient English to understand my story and then put me on hold to direct me to the correct person to deal with it. I was not as adept at feeding in the coins as I later became and it took several attempts. After the first few times, I at least had a name to ask for when I called, which was better, if she happened to be in. The convenience of an e-mail was a completely unimaginable future possibility.

After establishing the requirements from Athens, my next frustration was obtaining the official police report. I made the initial mistake of thinking that it couldn’t be too complicated. It was. The police station near where I was staying in the tourist part of town, and where they spoke some English, listened to the details of my story. “Where had the incident taken place?”, they asked. I wasn’t entirely sure. I had a vague sense and indicated it on a map. “Well in that case”, they said, they could not process my complaint. I would have to report it at the police station nearest where it had occurred.

I don’t remember how I came to the particular police station. Perhaps I simply chose a random one, out of frustration. I do remember that it was a horribly grim place and a bad choice. It reminded me strongly of scenes from Midnight Express. No one there spoke English. I spent a long time over many days waiting in an empty, second floor hallway on a hard wooden bench.

During my whole time in Turkey I had absolutely no contact with my parents or anyone else I knew. Directly after the mugging I needed to focus my very limited resources on the immediate priorities. The comfort of home and family support seemed so separate from the reality I faced. And on the far tip of Africa, so distant from me, that I supposed they would be powerless to help in any way. So why contact them? Why make them worry? I also did not relish the idea of battling a longer and probably more complex international telephone connection to Africa.

But perhaps there was another factor to my not contacting my parents. I was on a solitary voyage to a far and foreign land, having left everything I knew behind me. I was looking for something. It had the makings of a quest, of a rite of passage. And now here stood the dragon before me. The challenge was mine alone to slay it.

I capitulated once in a bleak southern town about a month later. A telephone booth stood on a dusty street corner. I went in, armed with a line of coins, and dialled home. My mother answered. I felt a surge of emotion. I could picture just how and where she would be standing, surrounded by the comforting familiarity of our home.

“Hi Ma, its me”, I blurted out, “Hi.”

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Ma. Can you hear me?”

“Hello?”

“Ma, Ma. It’s me,” I shouted.

“Hello?”

I tried more coins. I banged my fists against the telephone. I listened to her for as long as she kept saying, “Hello? Hello?” Then the line went dead. The southern tip of Africa felt much further than the nine thousand kilometres that it was distant from where I stood.

In Istanbul, because I had time and not money, I mostly walked where I needed to go, sometimes fairly long distances. I have always enjoyed walking. But because I was a westerner, the touts of the ubiquitous mini-bus taxis that plied the streets, would call to me insistently, “Taxi, taxi.” Because one would pass every twenty seconds or so, and each would shout insistently, it could become extremely irritating on a long walk. There were days when I shouted my frustration at the taxi touts like I did at the public telephones. It made as little difference.

During this time I re-met the American who had lent me bus fare. I filled him in on my progress and hand to mouth existence. He made the very generous offer of lending me enough money, not only for an airfare back to London, but to sustain me in Turkey for the time it might take to extricate myself.

Before he left he directed me to a small backpackers where I became like part of the furniture. I hung out often in the lounge, reading or playing backgammon, trying for at least one win against the proprietor, which I never achieved. Travellers would hear my story and follow its slow progress during their stay. I spent several days confined to my bunk, clutching at violent cramps in my stomach, until a worried looking, German dormitory mate, who clearly had better risk management, came to my rescue with antibiotics.

When eventually my passport application with its hard won police stamps had been posted from Istanbul to Athens, I thought that at last I was getting the upper hand, that the dragon was all but slain. I was wrong. It still had fight in it. But I had some respite. I realized that I might as well see something of the rest of Turkey while waiting out the few weeks I had given myself to receive the passport. And so I set off across the Bosphorus, a traveller once again.

I remember the way the bubbles stung my eyes as I swum amongst Roman columns in the naturally carbonated waters of Pamukkale. I remember the explicit acoustics of the amphitheatre at Ephesus. I remember the crisp taste of small, red apples picked from remote orchards while walking the wide, weird landscapes of Cappadocia. I remember azure lagoons and white beaches.

I had little and needed little. The cheapest lodgings were on the roofs of the backpackers, lying out under the stars, on the grass mat I still carried. Was I happy? Was I lonely? I cannot really remember.

It is difficult in the telling of this story to separate the me I was then from the me I am now. To what extent are we the same person? To what extent are we different? How would the me that is telling this deal with the situation that was then? Would he deal with it better or would he deal with it worse?

Life is not about what happens to us. It is about how we respond to what happens to us. How we deal with what life puts in our path, is what creates the story of who we become. It seems that at twenty two, on a rite of passage of becoming, I acted admirably in terms of this. But I have not always been successful at it since, and it has left me with questions. The unfolding of each of our lives is different. Is our happiness dependent on what unfolds for us, or is it dependent on how we respond to what unfolds? To what extent does our response shape how our life unfolds? To what extent does whatever unfolds, shape our response?

Another scene I remember from these travels around Turkey is this: I am sitting with a man, perhaps a shepherd, somewhere remote in a rural, southern landscape. He can speak some English. We are about to share something to eat, something to drink. The sun is going down. It will soon be dark. Suddenly I feel a cold dread. I again have all the money I possess in the form of cash in my pocket. Again I am trusting a complete stranger. Have I learned nothing from my experience?

It is something I think about years later. When we are trusting of strangers it can go horribly wrong and cost us dearly. I had seen that. My dad argued that we cannot afford to simply trust. That it is prudent to play it safe, to distrust as a default, until we can be more sure. But I always wondered what, less obviously perhaps, it costs us to distrust, and whether we can afford that. Having insurance makes us feel more secure, but the premiums can cost us more in the end than the loss we might take.

The day promising my departure from Turkey had at last come. After an overnight bus journey, I arrived at the backpackers in Istanbul early in the morning, a small homecoming of sorts. My flight was at 8pm. I had stretched out my remaining money. What was left could not only cover bus fare to the airport, but could treat me to a decent breakfast. Perhaps today I would finally win a game of backgammon off the proprietor.

But my first concern was - did he have the package containing my passport that had arrived from Athens? He did not. Nothing had arrived yet. This was unwelcome news. My day immediately took on a different feel. It was back to the telephone booth on the street outside.

But it had been posted from Athens almost two weeks previously. It should have arrived. “But it hasn’t. I don’t have it”, I shouted desperately. The dragon was making a last stand, fighting tooth and nail. At some point in all the to-ing and fro-ing someone, it may have been the proprietor, thought to check the address to which it had been posted. It was not the backpackers address. It was a business address across the city. It turned out to be the Thomas Cook offices. I think the application form had been posted from there, a function of my friend there having helped me. And for some odd reason the embassy had returned it to that address.

Breakfast had been forgotten. It was getting to lunch time. I called her. She didn’t have it, knew nothing about it, but had been out of the office for a few days. She would check and call me back. I waited, hoping desperately. She called. It was not in the office and no one there knew anything about it.

Another call to Athens to absolutely check the address. No solutions there. It was now after 3 pm. I slumped dejectedly in the backpackers. I felt ill. The window of escape from all of this, that had looked so bright this morning, was fast shutting on me. I grimly contemplated my future. Would I be waking up in Istanbul tomorrow in exactly the same situation in which I had awoken on my first morning in the city, more than a month ago - penniless again and still with no travel document?

There was a call for me at the backpackers. It was my friend from Thomas Cook. She had found it! She had it in her hand. It turns out the person who was responsible for emptying the post office box had been ill, and so hadn’t done it for a while. She had gone down there herself. And now she had it. But I must hurry.

The proprietor, usually laid back and slightly disinterested, sprung into action. A taxi was organised and paid for. I grabbed my things and was bundled into it. We needed to cross the city to the Thomas Cook office and then cross again to the airport. It was afternoon traffic. It would be touch and go.

She was standing on the pavement outside the Thomas Cook office. She handed me the envelope. I hugged her. “Go, go!”, she shouted and I hopped back into the taxi and off we sped. I ripped open the envelope with my name and Greek postage stamps on it. Inside was something called a temporary travel document. Printed in large red letters across the top was this: ONLY VALID FOR TRAVEL BETWEEN ISTANBUL & ATHENS. My flight was to Heathrow.

I couldn’t let that put me off now. I had to ride this wave and stay on it. I ran across the departure hall. My heart was pounding as I offered the inadequate travel document at passport control and at boarding. There was far more adrenalin then there had been entering Schiphol on Richard’s passport. I made it through without incident.

I would be arriving at Heathrow, a penniless South African without valid travel documents. I did not expect to be welcomed with open arms, but it felt absolutely fantastic, nevertheless, to be sitting back, with my head on the seat, seeing the lights of Istanbul disappearing behind me in the east.

I ended up in an office across the desk from an immigration official. I tried to spin a story that would allow me back into London, but it was a long shot. They were very thorough, asked too many questions and my story didn’t hang together well when my illegal working in the UK was censored out. At least everything was English, very English in fact. I was informed that I would be put on the next available flight to South Africa and was transferred to a holding facility within Heathrow where all the other people who had been trying to get into the UK that night, mostly Asians, were being held. They allowed me a local phone call. Although there wasn’t anybody I could really call - none of my friends in London lived in the kind of places that had telephones - the temptation of using a telephone that worked and being answered in English was too much, and so I called a friend’s aunt in London to leave a message for my friends. I was offended when one of the women at the facility expressed surprise at my good English. In my opinion it was better than hers.

I was escorted right onto the plane, down the entrance tube and to my seat, by a uniformed immigration officer. After he left, the air hostess eyed me until the aeroplane doors were shut fast, as if I might make a sudden dash for the exit.

I had the flight to Johannesburg to get used to the idea that I was heading home. Until now, that option had not been one of the short term futures I was contemplating. I had plans to work in London again and aspiration to reach Sandee in the US. At least I was not on a plane back to Turkey. And it felt good, going through immigration at Johannesburg, to be recognised once again as having a legitimate claim to be where I was.

Various of the friends I had travelled with had tried to make a surprise return home, but inevitably word got around and they were expected. Mine worked because it surprised even me. And having made it this far, it seemed fitting to complete the total surprise in person. The fact that I had no money and that home was still 1,500 km away seemed inconsequential. I was used to operating that way. And so I walked to the airport exit road and stuck out my thumb. After a few lifts within the city limits I got on the highway south and travelled most of the way across the dry interior of the country in a long distance truck. We stopped in a small dorp somewhere and the driver bought me food. It was in the days before One-Stops. The food came out of greasy, silver trays behind a smeared, glass counter front. The shelves of the café were lined with South African brands. I took in the warmth, the smells, the sound of people talking in familiar tongues. Outside I sensed the vast stillness that surrounded this small hub of night time sound and light. This was indeed South Africa.

We slept for a few hours in a road siding, the driver in a curtained-off bunk at the back of the cab, me across the seats. I couldn’t really sleep. I was excited. I wandered out a bit into the veld to take a pee, under the boundless, starry Karoo sky.

At the end of the Karoo, the geology changes and the vast flatness turns vertical. I wouldn’t have known about the geology then. I wouldn’t have been intimate, like I am now, with each of the mountain ranges through which the road passes. But I would have sensed an increasing familiarity in the land. It would have begun to feel like home.

You get your first view of Table Mountain from the western side of Du Toits Kloof Pass. For many years there was a tunnel being built through these mountains. When I left South Africa it was not yet finished. I asked the truck driver about it. It has been recently opened. We exited the tunnel with the sun rising behind us, illuminating Table Mountain on the skyline ahead.

As I think about this story now, I cannot but be impressed by the young hero’s whole journey of slaying the dragon and returning. I am impressed by the independence, the resourcefulness, the ability and perseverance to respond to what needed to be done. I cannot imagine how the narrator of this story would cope now outside Johannesburg airport without a cent and without a cell phone.

I pass where they are now building traffic lights at the Llandudno entrance off the coastal road. This is where, twenty six years ago, my last lift dropped me, and from where I walked the last kilometre home. It would have all been so familiar and so new, so welcoming. It was a Sunday morning. I rung the doorbell. I could hear my mom and dad talking at the table, wondering who might be visiting, then the scrape of a chair. The door opened and there stood my mother, exactly in the place I had pictured her as I listened to her, “Hello? Hello?” from a telephone booth in a dusty Turkish town.

There was no design to my homecoming. There were simply choices in response to a sequence of cascading events, a multitude of possible permutations, only one of which could realize. I cannot remember who exactly I was twenty six years ago, how I made sense of the world then, of what exactly I believed. But I was probably more likely to have held that there is a possibility of unearthing an in-tact, concealed meaning from beneath the unfolding of events, probably less inclined to think of meaning as something that emerges more randomly out of the unfolding. I was probably less comfortable then with the idea of chance, of God playing dice. Thinking about it now it seems that, whatever number the dice turns up, it is the engagement with it, with the quest that it offers, that makes possible a homecoming.

There are several moments that define the homecoming of this story - stepping off the plane in Johannesburg, arriving through the Du Toits Kloof tunnel at sunrise, my mother’s look of delighted surprise in the entrance of our home. But perhaps in retrospect, none are quite so defining as this one: It happened later that morning. I was out the front, enjoying the view over the sea on a glorious spring day. Sandra happened to be in the neighbourhood and decided, on a whim, and for the first time ever, to pop-in on my parents. As she came up the driveway towards me she wondered who the bearded man on their balcony was.

Happy New Year

2015-04-02T14:46:00.002+02:00

Is it the here and now that matters? Is it what we bring back? Is it both? If it's what we bring back, then it's this: two skulls from leopard kills – one a klipspringer, one a dassie; a rough, hand-carved piece of donkey cart from along the hundred year old road; half a rusted horse shoe; a luminous, moon-like, pebble; a hexagonal quartz crystal; a pressed disa. Also photographs and memories, a tired body, a re-kindled desire to spend more time in places of beauty, and an inspiration to save mockingbirds.

Sandra and I are much more strategic about the ending of this year's family trip into the mountains, than we are about the beginning. By the end we are more in tune.

It is later than we intended in the afternoon of the last day of 2014. Our route into the mountains on the other side of the heat-trapping valley feels a long way off. A few hundred meters into our walk there, and we stop at a ditch under the road to squeeze muddy water over our hats. A car passes and covers us in dust. Enthusiasm is low. Six days of supplies are feeling heavy on our backs. Sandra and I are kicking ourselves that I didn't drive them across the valley, and return alone to leave the car at the Hanekom's farm.

But as it always does, adversary teaches us things we don't yet know. This time I learn that angels can be Afrikaans. It is not surprising that she looks angelic, giving us flight from the dusty heat in the back of her white Toyota bakkie. But she looks equally angelic in the wedding portraits that we are shown at the end of our trip hanging in her mother, Tannie Hannekom's, reed ceilinged lounge. As we part I try to appear unlike a Nazi parent - route marching my kids through barren mountains in the summer heat. “It's a bit of a rough start. But they will get into it”, I assure her. I hope to myself that this is true.

It is not an easy first day of hiking. By the time we reach camp, night is upon us. Sebastian has lost a scarf and fallen in a ditch. He is in pieces. But a swim in the gentle stream in the dark, and supper in our peaceful camp, revives the spirits. Our beds, laid out in a row under the canopy of the tree, have great appeal.

We have no watch and no idea of the time. But the moment of transition from 2014 to 2015 is marked, by three things. The first is that the branch, holding one of our food packets out of reach of animals, breaks, so that the packet lands with a thud near my head, waking me up. The second is that an eagle owl lands on another branch just above me and hoots. And a moment later the wind carries up, from the valley below, a single, distant phrase: someone shouting, 'Happy new year.'

For the first six days of 2015, those three words are the only sign we have of any contemporary human existence, other than the four of us. And for the first six days of 2015, the only world that exists outside of the wild mountain valleys through which we walk, is the 1935 Alabama of Scout, Jem and Atticus Finch. We have a tradition of carrying a book on each trip, that we read together. Our chosen book this time is To Kill a Mockingbird.

Our year starts tranquilly under the old oaks. The children sleep. Sandra and I drink tea. Today's route follows the hundred year old road. We know it is one hundred years old because, just over the top of the pass, just beyond the awesome rock pools where we lunch, the road building gang carved their names and the date into a smooth shale bank in the road cutting. One hundred years ago. The road for which they laboured, for which they built intricate dry stone walls by hand, is overgrown and now serves predominantly as a mountain passage for leopards. Their signs are everywhere. The children are particularly proud of their discovery of a rock Candlewood tree with deeply etched territory markings in its trunk.

Being the 1^st of January it is hot. I have either a natural or acquired resilience to mountain heat. But my wife and children do not. And so a south facing cliff, complete with dripping waterfall provides a welcome, cool break. Rested, we explore along the cliff line. At a point we look up to discover a massive, wild beehive dangling above us. It is an impressive construction with huge, geometric fins of honeycomb, blackened by hundreds of bees. The children are fascinated, but we hurry them away, amid visions of the swarm descending onto us. Phoebe asks about our hurry, wanting rather to stay and admire. After our explanations, she is visibly impressed with the idea that such beauty could be deadly.

Of our five camps, the second is our least favourite. Sandra feels that the old, ruined farm house, the scraggly, fire-and-drought-ravaged oaks, the long-abandoned field, has an unhappy story to tell. It is the only camp that is out of earshot of water. When Sebastian and I go back to look for his lost shoe, I find an ancient tricycle. I rescue it from the rubble in which it lies discarded. It seems to deserve better. I stand it on rusted rims on the hundred year old road, wondering at what its long forgotten memory of this road could possibly hold – laughter, speed, freedom, escape, toil?

Do the leopards who walk this road hope, I wonder? I am thinking about hope because I am hoping to find Sebastian's lost shoe. Against all the odds. I doubt they do. I think hope is one of the hallmarks of our humanness, perhaps what distinguishes us from other species. I am walking alone in the dawn light, returning along the way we walked yesterday, while my family lies sleeping. I have offered to go back to look for Sebastian's shoe. Hope is what has got me up early. Perhaps hope is what gets us up every morning. But my generosity to Sebastian carries rewards for me. The dawn stillness, the time to reflect, the absence of other demands but the one to walk. I love being with my family in the mountains, but I also love being alone.

For a while I try to walk like I imagine the leopard might, without the imposition of hope. But for our species it is too hard. And in the end I return to our camp to share my disappointment with Sebastian.

Many people do not like snakes. And it is one of the most common questions we get from non-hikers about our family mountain escapades – did we not see snakes? I love to encounter them in the mountains. I love watching their silent, lethal beauty, feeling the push and the pull of it. But I have never had an encounter quite like the one on our third day. One of the things that distinguishes it, is its duration. It is seldom that one gets to share prolonged awareness of each others proximity, in the wild, with an animal like a Cape Cobra, the most venomous of southern African snakes.

We are at the high dam in the midday heat, looking for somewhere to lunch. It is a place that unusually combines a flat expanse of water, with elevation. Instead of the ground rising around the blue water, it drops, out over range after range of hazy mountains into the distance. The water is lower than it is in the spring, when I am usually here. Between the high water mark and the water surface is a bleached, vegetation-less moonscape of rock and soil creating an intricate desert coastline.

“Look out there”, Sebastian says excitedly, pointing. “What is that?” We make out a large snake floating out on the water. Fascinated, we watch it bob up and down, blown steadily away from us by the off-shore wind. We wonder where it will end up.

After some time it starts swimming and we marvel at its grace, efficiency and speed across the water. It is clearly returning to shore, some way down the coast from us. We move in that direction to get a closer look, but soon realise that when it becomes aware of our presence on the shore, it stops completely, bobbing away from us like a floating stick again. So we move slowly and silently towards intercepting its landing, stopping each time it does. As it nears the shore it becomes more and more weary. We are holding our breaths, hardly moving. It swims out of view behind a rock and affords us a moment to creep even closer. And then for a long time we watch each other, both sides poised and alert. The only sound is of the wind, the only action the snake's small, cautious movements. Eventually it glides out from the water, across the sand in front of us and disappears among some large boulders.

From the high dam we go up even higher, up to the viewpoint into Disa Valley. It is in the serenity of this valley, encircled by high rocky peaks, that we plan to spend two nights in the same camp. So that we have a whole day with no walking agenda.

Ivan gave this place the name of Disa Valley. I have been a little skeptical about that name. Sure, it has a nice, alluring ring to it, but how appropriate is it really? I have never even seen a disa here before. But I realise that I have never been here in January, and when you are, it is impossible to think of it as being anything but Disa Valley.

When Sebastian asks if he can include one of the disas in his flower pressing collection in his journal, I am unsure. It feels a little like killing a mockingbird, robbing the world of a unique beauty. It feels different to the other flowers he has. But in the end I decide to let him. Can one flower out of thousands make a difference? Is it a robbing of beauty or a preservation? And if so for whom? A dead mockingbird no longer sings.

As days pass, we fall into a simple mountain rhythm determined by the rising and setting of the sun, by the shrinking and lengthening of shade, by the heat of days, and the coolness of nights. Everything we need fits into a backpack. I love the simplicity of it, the adequacy of it. Daily necessities, take on a more immediate, simpler quality – cooking, cleaning, brushing one's teeth, toileting.

Toileting in wilderness is affectionately known as bos kakking. Its practice out here provides an opportunity for one of the life lessons I try from time to time to bestow upon the kids. They tease me about these life lessons. Sebastian will say, 'Dad, here's a life lesson I need to show you...' Beyond the teasing though, I like to think some impression is made. I am heartened when Sebastian asks me something about the 'tasks of simple labour' one. A few weeks earlier, we had been picking up squishy, rotten plums off the ground on which we were setting up our Christmas dinner table. There were a lot. The only way to do it was to do it, slowly, graciously, plum by plum. We talked about the value of doing tasks of simple labour such as monks do in a monastery. That night, the one before our Christmas dinner, the south easter howled and we learned this: It is a good idea to climb into the trees and give the branches a very vigorous shake, before you clear the plums from the ground below them.

I tell them, based on my own experience, that they are only really likely to appreciate the bos kakking life lesson when they are over forty. But maybe they will learn quicker than me. The essence of it is this: There are things in life you've just got to do, even though they don't appeal. Attempting to ignore, avoid or resist them only causes discomfort. And when you can completely drop all resistance, the whole experience of doing them is transformed.

There are more lessons in the simple task of bos kakking, and this is another: Preparation is important. Don't delay to the extent that you are put under pressure. Key to good preparation is the choice of site. And key to the choice of site, in the pedalogical environment of the Cape Fold Mountains, is the identification of deep, sandy deposits that are not associated with contemporary water courses. I try largely unsuccessfully, to explain how one goes about doing this, how one feels into the dynamic of the landscape's evolution to reveal what lies below the surface. But I give up with, “Maybe my ability to do this has something to do with my being a soil scientist.”

For many years I struggled to see much value in my professional training as a soil scientist. But my perspective on that has changed. For one thing, it helps me dig holes, and as one discovers when walking through the rocky Cape Mountains, holes are one of life's little necessities.

As we read our way into Scout Finch's story, the kids clamour more and more for me to read - during breaks in the day's walks, in the shady afternoons of camps, by head torch in our beds before sleep. My favourite character is Scout, Phoebe's too. I fall in love again with her take on life. I fall in love again with the enchanting mixture of innocence and wisdom that the story holds. Sebastian's favourite is Jem, Sandra's is Atticus. In Disa Valley we have time to read lots. It is where we discover what happens to Jim, and where we read to the end. It is where I am inspired to save Mockingbirds, including the ones that sing in my children's hearts. The choice of book was a grab from our bookshelf on the morning we left home. It is a copy that still has the pencilled school set work notes of one of my sisters, and the purple stamp of Wynberg Girls High. It is the perfect choice.

There are beautiful rock pools in Disa Valley, but I know there are even better ones to come. By the time we get there, my camera battery is flat, so the only images I have of the pools, are the ones held in my mind. I know that the kloof we are descending holds the best for last. Towards the bottom, I take great pleasure in leading my family up the steep, water-worn, grey rock to perch, for just a moment, at the first sight of it and then leap into its bright, green depths. What I do not yet know it that the last day will top even this pool, and that I will not be the one to discover it.

On our last afternoon we reach a beautiful refuge spot from heat and exposure - tea, a snooze for adults, a game of cards for children, and an expanse of water for swimming. But it is a place that has road access from the valley below, a place that bears small marks of human use. It is not the wilderness in which we have been for the entire duration of 2015 so far. And we must make a choice. Do we camp here, in an acceptable spot with some limitations or do we go on into a part of the mountain I have not previously walked, hoping to find something better? Sandra has a strong feeling for going on, and we go with it. For our final night in the wilderness, it is the perfect choice. As I said, we are now more in tune.

It is a short walk to the car from our last night's camp, but the kloof above it entices me. Exploratory diversions from our main walking route are usually my opportunity to be alone. But on our last morning I am pleased that Sebastian chooses to accompany me, for the first time. From the top of the waterfall we wave to Sandra and Phoebe in the rock pools far below. We are drawn along the route above that plunging water has worn patiently through thick slabs of solid sandstone. Sebastian is up ahead. I hear him calling. The overall appeal of a rock pool is a function of different things: water clarity, depth, symmetry, the smoothness of the rock around its edge. When I reach Sebastian he is perfectly framed by a pool whose function adds up to pure appeal. He is ready to plunge.

For the last few days of our trip dwindling food rations are carefully portioned out per meal. The sparse sufficiency of it heightens the appreciation of each mouthful, proves how used we are to excess. When things are unavailable to us, we build their desirability up in our minds. We want them. We think we need them. When we hike for long times we lust for junk food and ice cream. But I notice later that morning that there is something far more satisfying about the glass of cold, farm milk in Tannie Hanekom's kitchen than there is about the subsequent Coke and Magnum from the Op die Berg Spar.

There is an etiquette on farms around use of the front door versus the kitchen door that I don't fully understand. When we knock on the Hanekom's front door at the end of our trip, we are shown in by Jannie through the kitchen door. I notice later that the neighbour comes directly to the kitchen door.

It is a little like the Oom and Tannie thing. How much older than you does someone need to be for you to address them as Oom or Tannie? With Jannie it is clearer. His hat, his manner, and his life in the harsh Bokkeveld sun make him an obvious Oom. With his wife I am less certain. In her lounge we look over the framed family-tree portraits of five generations of Johannes Hendrik Hanekoms that have made and make their living on Ysterplaat. I note that she is eleven years older than me.

As we add future legs to our family walk along the length of the Cape Fold Mountains we will go south of the Hanekom's world. I will miss our hike endings in the hospitality of their farm kitchen. I will miss the simplicity of cold, farm milk on a hot day.

On a weekend some time into our new year, Sebastian and I are getting up before dawn to go out. He is bright and excited for so early. He has a look of glee that says, “I have been thinking and I have a way to catch you out.”

“Do we live in a monastery”, he asks. And then eagerly presents his closing argument: “Because if not, why do we have to do tasks of simple labour?”

It is a still, silent, summer's morning. The house stands open to the very first glimpse of dawn, to the waking murmurs of robins and white-eyes in the trees around us.

“Well”, I say. “In a sense we do. Yes, in a sense we do.”

Resolutions from paradise

2014-02-12T11:48:00.002+02:00

The beginning of each new year offers a natural, little pause in which it is common to think about the coming year. We can make resolutions. We can set intentions. We can re-consider how we want to live, what we want to hope for, what we want to strive for.

Sometimes more significant events come along that break the everyday unfolding of daily routines, to bring clarity and a changed perspective. A near-death experience is said to be one such event. If that is so, then going beyond near-death, and all the way to paradise, like we did at the beginning of this year, must surely offer an amazing opportunity for renewing how we want to live into the rest of our lives.

Each day in paradise, this January,
we awoke to the sun rising straight from the ocean before us, to the unique tune of the earliest dawn chorus. We wandered along deserted, forest-fringed beaches, and grass-green rolling hills above the waves. We read our way through high piles of books that smelled of paper. We floated down warm, salty waves and up estuaries. We never travelled faster than the speed of our walking, we purchased nothing, and we didn't so much as glance at a screen. We played chess and we tried to fish. On the way in we drove through Qunu. I finally read Long Walk to Freedom. I read A New Earth for the third or fourth time. I read the inspiring collector's edition of the Big Issue, from cover to cover.

I feel like I have returned with some of the clarity of the sea running into the estuary over white sand on the incoming tide, with some of the perspective offered by long horizoned, cloud-patterned sunrises above a restless ocean. I feel I am ready for a new year.

There are three points that have been on my annual list of new year's intentions for the last several years. I implement them with mixed success, and so they remain on the list:

make choices with my time that bring value to every moment.
write more
climb more

Inspired by my experience of all that paradise held for us, I add these intentions, all tinged with its optimistic hues:

To treat the demands of life more like a Wild Coast sunrise.
To be awake enough to appreciate the difference in the dawn chorus.
To carry less stuff
To intervene less in the choices of others.
To view with as little concern as Phoebe, a chess move that might loose a bishop, because: “Its no problem. I have another one.”
To embrace the feeling of salt on my skin.
To live the value of rather being kind than being right.
To not hopelessly entangle my own frustrated experience with Sebastian’s aspirations for hooking a big one.
To appreciate the shape and feel and value of sand and rocks and all that is not rare or fragile or expensive.
To live more into questions, like Phoebe's, of why peaches turn from green to yellow and whether anyone knows for real where humanity comes from.
To act on my exciting conviction that it is possible to reconcile my spirituality and my atheism.
To hold close the solid, rounded, smooth remembrance of my grandmother's cowrie shells and the connections to who and what has added value to my past.
To read and live beyond my own cultural entrenchment and the viewpoint appropriate to my age and station.
To be cognisant of my privileged freedom in paradise and of what I could do with that.
To be influenced in my life choices by Madiba's Long Walk to Freedom.

We leave paradise early one morning for the long journey home. Up in the hills there is movement and noise. Groups of uniformed school children are making their way along the potholed roads towards various schools dotted across the landscape. Others are going the opposite way, herding cows. An old Gogo is talking animatedly. To us? We reverse to see if she wants a lift. But it seems not. She tells us her story. We shrug. She shrugs. We don't share a language.

I am keen to visit Madiba's gave site. I think I remember a sign on the way up. But it is difficult to know where the village of Qunu starts and stops amongst the colourful buildings spread across the hills. We pass something called the Qunu store. But further along the stores have other names. We seem to have missed it. And now it's probably not worth turning back. We continue heading west, out of this rural, rolling landscape, towards Plett.

A tribute to Mike

2014-01-29T11:47:00.002+02:00

On the 17^th of January my uncle, Mike Mamacos, died. He was in his late eighties and had lived out the last 10 or more years of his life as something of a hermit in his beautiful, simple dwelling, deep in the Du Toits Kloof mountains, that has no electricity or communication connections with the outside world. Although a loner, he was also a quiet but welcoming host to visitors. In his day, Mike was one of the best rock climbers in the world. At a memorial gathering held at the mountain club I paid tribute to this unusual man. Composing what I wanted to say was a valuable, meaning-making process of realising and appreciating what his influence means for me:

When someone we have known dies, I think it is valuable to think about and realise the ways in which they live on for us. Mike lives on for me in two ways. Firstly he was the inspiration for my becoming a climber, not in a very direct way because he mostly did his climbing before I was born. But I grew up with a powerful sense of family mystique around what my uncle had achieved as a climber, and shrouded somewhere in this was a place called the north west face of Du Toits Peak, which rose above my childhood like a summit beacon of inspiration to which I was always strongly drawn.

Mike opening Jacob's Ladder

When we were kids, Mike used to take Kimon, Alex and me out scrambling on Table Mountain sometimes. But the climbing memory of Mike that is most significant is from later. It is in fact two connected memories separated in time, but connected because they are both of Jacob's Ladder, the rock climb on the front of Table Mountain that is probably South Africa's most iconic, most photographed, most aspired to, most enjoyed rock climb, and which was opened (ie first climbed) by Mike in 1953.

At a time when I was itching to get into climbing Mike took Kimon and me, as our first real rock climb, up the Jacob's Ladder head wall. And although this was the 1980's and rock climbing technology had come a long way since the 50's, in typical Mike fashion, he eschewed all of this and climbed in the way he had always climbed – hawser laid rope in a bowline around his waist, no sticky rubber, no gear.

He didn't lead Jacob's that time. Kimon and I top-roped and we accessed it by climbing, Cobblestone, a route next door. I remember passing another party on the way up Cobblestone, and I can only image now what they must have made of us at first – an elderly guy with two youngsters, climbing with long outdated gear but moving swiftly and smoothly past them, placing no protection, as they fiddled with gear and placements. And I remember that at some point there was a revered recognition from them that we were not some dangerously crazy fools but that this was in fact the legendary Mike Mamacos climbing past them. As a young, aspirant climber I felt very proud to be climbing that mountain with Mike.

The second part of this climbing memory of mine is from some 15 years later. By then I was an established climber and that time I had the honour of belaying Mike up Jacob's Ladder. I don't remember if he wore a harness or not, probably not, but what I do remember is that he didn't need one. There was no need for a tight rope, no need for resting on the rope. At age 70 something, having not really climbed for many decades, Mike cruised Jacob's Ladder.

I have come to realise that Mike wasn't just a good climber. He was a completely exceptional climber. To me and to everyone who climbs in South Africa Mike lives on in the numerous quality routes that he put up. But his value to us is not only in the routes themselves, but in how and when he climbed them. If Mike hadn't opened them, someone else, several years later and a way down the road of technology advancements would have opened them. But then they would have been lesser routes than they are. Mike's exceptionality as a climber I think lay in the natural ease with which he dared to go far beyond what everybody else at the time considered to be possible.

Whether we are rock climbers or not, Mike lives on in that vision and spirit of quiet boldness that, often when we are alone, at the sharp end of a rope or elsewhere, enables us to venture forward into the unknown.

The second way in which Mike has influenced and lives on for me, and for many others, is as the architect of the numerous amazing dwellings that he created out in our mountains and elsewhere, all with his signature aesthetic and intimate relationship with wild and beautiful place.

It is interesting that Mike, who in so many ways was such a loner, had a real gift for creating shared spaces that nurture human relationships in actually quite profound ways. Think of the community that grew up around the space that was Sani, that is Waaihoek. Think of the community that grows over a few days holed-up in the Matroosberg Peak hut during a blizzard, around a sunny weekend at Agter Tafelberg.

There is a magic of Mike's deeply infused in all of these places. And probably the most magic of all is in his Du Toits Hut, where he chose to live out his years and where he chose to die, alone, in such a quiet, under-stated, un-fussed, very individualistic, unconventional and self reliant, uniquely Mike kind of way.

Things that went growl in the night

2013-12-08T18:00:00.000+02:00

A kind-of sequel to a previous post: Things that go growl in the night

There is something satisfactory in returning to a wild place that you know well, a place beyond your everyday life, yet that is familiar because it holds a piece of your own history. If you are drawn back to such places, for whatever reasons, you may find that the combination of their wildness, their beauty and their familiarity invites you both backwards and forwards into your life in a mix that is compelling.

Yellowwood is such a place for me, a place that is within the geographical proximity of my everyday experience and yet far beyond it. Today the higher ground, everything above the foot slopes, is hidden in a cloud that has been stripped away from the plains over which I drove this morning, but still shrouds these mountains.

I have set out later than I planned to and alone. None of the friends I called to join me were free. I soon leave behind the thin line of highway with its verge of weeds and cast aside broken, plastic bits of civilization. The ingrained memory of pushing wearily through a tangle of rocks and fynbos, late in a long cycle of intense effort, makes me, on these occasions, want to perfect a line of least resistance through here. And to channel those who will follow into a single path, for both their own individual ease and, over time, to contribute to a communal ease. A shared path in these places makes for much easier passage.

My Swiss mountain friend, Jurgen says that the fynbos is not fyn bos at all. It is rofbos. Rof it is indeed, in character and underfoot. It makes the Western Cape mountains an unruly and unkempt distant kin of the alpine meadows of Jurgen's childhood. And yet he loves them, delights in those kind of trips that I tend to feel are best appreciated in retrospect. When the entangling scratchiness of impossibly slow progress is forgotten and only the glow of it remains. But when you realise that someone else is thriving in what you have presumed is universally experienced as horrible, it can transform your experience. And so I wonder about this desire to channel a communal passage and what drives it. Should I be attempting to influence the experience of those that choose to come here, to alter in any way what is?

When I make cairns I try to combine a consciousness of the cairns themselves as well as the path that they mark. I try to make them beautiful, to achieve an aesthetic and stable balance, not merely a jumble of strewn stones. And for that I use flat stones in a single pile, turned and sequenced to balance best. But it is an art that must be performed quickly for it is done on the move. Too much pondering, too much trial and error spoils it. It is an art that must trust the first thought from the options that present: the choice of stone, weighed and touched fleetingly, of sequence. This way or that way up?

Invariably some work better than others. Gravity is an objective judge whose harsh and weighty appraisal has shaped this entire mountain. And yet it troubles to judge each of my small cairns carefully and equally. I pass previous cairns of mine that have been harshly judged and sweep the remaining rubble aside or build them anew. Perhaps a different possibility presents itself.

Up near the cloud base it is muggy, although the wind cools. The first sips from my camel pack, those that come from the exposed length of pipe over my shoulder, are cool. But those that follow are warmed from the exertion through my back. It is always steeper than I expect, and further. I take small sips of coolness.

The spot where the camera stands is a quiet place, a place where the cliffs on the side of the gorge run up against the scree forest of its base. All who pass here, I hope, will take this narrow passage, regardless of any cairns that mark it. The spot is also a natural pause on an ascent or descent of this gorge. Several times I have dropped my pack and rested here amongst the trees with my back against the cool rock.

I have no way of knowing what the camera has seen until I get home and put the memory card in my computer. It is a little like the delayed gratification of the pre-digital film era. It feels appropriate to this place. There is a pleasure in knowing that not everything is available, always, and everywhere.

Before I leave, I spend time fiddling with the camera, moving it slightly left, securing it. Wondering what might have passed. Hoping. There are fresh scratches on the tree. I wonder how the timing of them has corresponded to the battery life of the camera.

It is evening when I return home. Friends are having drinks in our garden. It is good to sit, to feel the physicality of what I have done, in my legs, the rofbos scratches on my skin. I am not in a hurry to look at the pictures. Last time they had been disappointing and I am expecting the same, somehow. But later Sebastian asks for the disk and we all drift inside and gather around my laptop once he slips it in.

One of the first pictures is of a genet. “Oh cool”, the kids exclaim. Then a few birds.

There is a synchronous exhalation from all of us gathered around the computer, like from the crowd at a sports match, when the first picture of her appears. And then there is another and another. Another photo and another animal and another. There is a sense of something expanding into the space of the shared witnessing of what is being revealed on the monitor before us. Each is a revelation that goes deeper and deeper behind the two dimensionality of the screen. There is a rare and precious beauty that is close to us, but that remains hidden, that we vaguely know is there, but when we witness it, amazes us.

Later that night I take great pleasure in sending the images out to a wider audience. Like the unexpected sparkle of sunlight from a rock pool on a hot, dry day, they cannot fail to charm, to excite, to mesmerise. And I relish the play of light that comes back to me.

In the beginning of Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey talks about surfaces in a way that makes me re-think them. The surface of things is often enough, he says. The textured patterns of lichen brought into close focus before my face on the short rock scramble below. The sharp edge of a crack cleaving a boulder. The sweeping height of the wall above, seen momentarily through swirling cloud. The supreme beauty of a leopard marking its territory in sharp scratches in the roughly textured bark of a Kershout tree.

Note: the camera captured 3 different leopards, a male plus a mother and cub. For more information on these leopards have a look at: Cape Leopard Trust news

Witness to an eclipse

2013-07-29T21:03:00.000+02:00

This article was written for the September issue of SA Mountain Magazine.

The Cederberg has the best climbing in the world. I don't know this because I've compared climbing destinations around the world. I know it because I've climbed in the Cederberg. That is enough. It is hard to imagine having a better friend than your best friend. Climbers are not objective route quality measuring devices. We are human and part of what I love about climbing is that it engages so much of my humanity. However beautiful the rock and the moves on a route, our experience of climbing it is about much more than just that.

Climbing Eclipse is confirmation for me that it can't get much better. I have not climbed this route before. Now I stand below it with my son, tracing the line of its natural break up the steep, clean-cut, orange wall, towering above us. After the business of yesterday's long weekend, we are pretty much alone on the mountain today. It is silent, and up against the rock it is cold. It is the first time my son will climb anything other than a sport route. It is only the second time he will belay.

Not everyone thinks it is wise for me to be climbing up here alone with a 10 year old. But I have a strong conviction that it is. Sure, there is a risk. But there is also a risk in not being here. For that would deny Sebastian the learning opportunity of being empowered into the responsibility of risk. I want that for him. And I want to be with him as he learns it.

Two days ago we went to Sanddrif Crag so that I could get a sense of whether he is old enough yet, to belay me. Several bolts up a sport route I weight the rope, very tentatively at first. But soon I am jumping off from increasing height above the bolts, and he holds me without problem. It seems we are ready. He asks, of course, about the grade. He acknowledges, but I think can't really comprehend, my caution that a grade 13 will feel very different 6 pitches up a big, steep wall to how it feels at Silvermine Lower Crag.

There is very little chance of me falling off a route of this grade, but the imagined trauma for Sebastian if I take a serious fall makes me climb with great care. I realise as I lead us upwards, that I am placing gear not for myself but for Sebastian. I see every move from his perspective, where he will feel insecure, where he will struggle.

There is history here: my own, Sebastian's and a generation of climbers before us. Thirty five years ago André Schoon was making the first ascent of this route. I don't know it at the time, but amazingly he was doing it with his 11 year old son, Alistair, as part of the opening party.

Tired and elated after their day's climbing, the first ascensionists were enjoying beers around the braai fire down at the Sanddrif cottages. The night was still. The full moon rose over the river, and then to their surprise the dark shadow of an eclipse crept across it. Their new climb had its name.

If it is somewhat out there to be here today with a young child, imagine what it was like then, on a first ascent. Imagine too being the first on this wall. It is difficult from our so much more climbing developed perspective, to imagine having a cliff such as this at the exclusive disposal of your first ascensionist aspirations. You can understand why André and his climbing partner, Pete du Preez kept coming back after doing the first exploratory climb on the face, Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, in July 1978. And why they tried to do it under a cloak of secrecy. When they saw the newspaper advert for BP fuel, showing climbers aiding through what would become known, because of it, as the BP Overhang, they thought they had lost their advantage. So they named their next climb, Day of the Jackals in anticipation of those who would arrive seeking spoils. But they still had a good time of it, and André managed a total of 13 first ascents on the south east and south west walls of Wolfberg in that year and the next.

I first climbed at Wolfberg near the beginning of my climbing career more than 20 years ago. Andrew Forsyth lead me up Celestial Journey. I lead the woman, who was to become Sebastian's mother, up Little Red Rooster. Since then, I have ticked many of Wolfberg's classics with different friends, and I have grown as a climber into changing roles. Yesterday I led Arjan up Omega. He was a stranger I met the day before at the sport crag, and I could offer him his very first tradding experience. And today this.

At the end of the traverse on pitch 2, Sebastian must make a step across the void to reach me at the stance. And for the first time the exposure kicks in. Pitch 3 is superb - up a vertical wall, which drops down sheer to the distant ground below. I watch from above as Sebastian inches his way up. He stops. And then in a small, quavering voice: “I can't do it daddy”.

“We have plenty of time”, I say. “Rest on the rope a while, and then see. Focus on looking up, not down”

He reaches me on the ledge with relief. We sit a while, share a drink and a snack, and the camaraderie of climbing partners joined by a rope. And then he is ready to go on. There has been a shift. He has shown himself what he is capable of. There is no stopping us now.

From the big ledge above pitch 5, I can go straight up another face of hardened, orange Cederberg stone on incut jugs and out through a final overlap a meter from the top. The world is at my feet. As I revel in it, a black eagle glides along the ledge line a few meters above where Sebastian belays, passing between us.

Attaining the other-wordly stone plateau on top of a Cederberg wall is always a peak moment. But being there for the first time with my son, is even more so. We linger to take it all in, coil the ropes, sort the gear. Then I lead him barefoot across the convoluted plateau, picking a line on smooth rock, between the fantastically sculpted gargoyles.

Every March, since being a parent we have made an annual pilgrimage to Sanddrif with a group of other families. Every year we do a hike through the cracks, with the next generation. Last year I took a group of the older ones, which includes Sebastian, up the first crack, the climber's crack, for the first time. This year we added the next kids in the age sequence. So Sebastian knows it well, but today is his first descent after having climbed a route on the wall.

Returning to the Cederberg is always a chance to reset the balance of what matters against the less important. As I follow Sebastian down the crack, which drops deep into the heart of this mountain, I know that what really matters is that each of us is vitally alive.

An eclipse is about the alignment of things in space. I am thinking more about the alignment of things in time. I am aware of the great privilege I have to measure some of the meaning of my life against the timelessness of a place like this.

On the day my father died

2013-07-19T09:27:00.000+02:00

I am driving towards the small city of Port Elizabeth in the winter darkness. The eastern horizon, dead ahead, gradually defines itself in increasingly lighter tones of orange, outlined between the dark earth and sky. There are raindrops on the windscreen. The new glasses I am wearing define the world around me more sharply. Everything is slightly more beautiful.

This is what I am thinking: The actual world beyond the windscreen pays scant attention to the models we use to understand it, whether they are models that attempt to attribute value ratings to agricultural land, or religious models that attempt to understand the mystery of human existence. I think we believe too much in the models. But of course if we don't, we set ourselves adrift in a spinning world. And that can be uncomfortable.

I am thinking this too: the world we live in, unlike the one turning in front of me, does not revolve on an axis of fact. That is something only hardened scientists believe in. And those who believe scientists.

The intricate deep black of an electricity pylon is etched on a flaming background. In seeing sharply there is no distinction in the beauty of things. The detail of everything belongs. Even the straggly, skew pines are beautiful.

The bakkie in which I am travelling is about function, not comfort. I have needed it to take me up sandy inclines through the dense coastal bush, and along tracks thick with mud and cow dung. The cab interior is sheer, grey plastic without frills. There is no intermittent setting on the windscreen wipers. There is no radio.

I often drive with the radio on. But this morning, without a choice, I am glad for the silence. A radio presenter's voice, and the adverts, I realize, would just noisily entrench my own culture. Stillness offers me more choice.

I love travelling through the detail of our land. I love the distinctness of each place. I am very aware, given my work of the last few days, of how each place has, over time, shaped our relationship with it. How the stories of all our associations are printed upon the pages of the ground around me, each one both universal and unique.

And as the world lightens, on my way to the city, I am beguiled by these stories. To my right and slightly behind me, is a somewhat irrelevant rainbow above a small, rounded hill that is catching the sun's first rays.

When driving on unfamiliar highways I tend to alternate between paying diligent attention to the directional sign boards overhead, and ignoring them completely, lost in other thoughts. And so sometimes options rush up at me, their explanations left behind. In a moment of panic, cursing the communication skills of the SA Roads Agency (why can't they also cater for those who don't like long term planning), I am forced to make a snap decision based entirely on intuition. I have learned that this navigation technique, while it may serve me well in the mountains, is completely unsuited to the loopy world of intersecting highways. But I realize too that intuition cannot do worse here, than some hard and fast rule such as: if unsure, stick to the way you're going.

Fortunately the off-ramp I need is one of those to which I am paying attention. It turns me a hundred and eighty degrees, away from the bay and the rising sun, and towards the airport. The rainbow is still there, larger now, wider. Less irrelevant. It stretches above the city, a little to the left of the soccer stadium. A line of low cloud about quarter way up, blurs the distinctions between its colours there. And then higher up the rainbow fades into altitude and over-arching cloud.

In an hour I will board a plane home for Cape Town. I will go from the airport to the hospital to be with my father, for what will turn out to be the last time. He will not be able to talk to me in the voice I have known all my life. I will not be able to understand much of what he says, his mind wandering freely beyond the heaviness of his tongue. But I will hear him say my name, distinctly.

In an hour the humanity around me will be concentrated many times, and packaged, to fly over all of this. I do not yet know what awaits me. I am happy to be down here on a slowly spinning world, adrift amongst the vagaries of sunrises and rainbows. I like the silence, the aloneness, and the certainty of the ground.

Farewell to Ernie

2013-07-07T13:43:00.002+02:00

On Wednesday 3rd July a crowd of family and friends gathered to bid farewell to my dad, Ernie. We were at the Llandudno Lifesaving Club on the beach in Llandudno, where my dad had lived for more than 50 years. Ernie died on Friday 28 June, aged 80, after a gradual deterioration compounded by his spinal injury, from a mountain biking accident, and the subsequent 15 years he spent in a wheelchair. This is what I and others said at the gathering:

It is right that we gather in this beautiful place, Llandudno, to remember our dad. Perhaps this is not the most practical choice of venue, with everyone squashing in, but I am confident it is the right one. Ern always said the only way he wanted to leave Llandudno was in a box. And he pretty much achieved that. Llandudno was Ernie's home and his community for more than 50 years. I couldn't imagine him living in Kronendal Retirement Village, where he reluctantly bought a house. I couldn't imagine him not living in Llandudno. And he couldn't either. I am so grateful that he was able to live out his days here, in the place he belonged.

This beautiful beach is inextricably linked with the picture I hold of my dad. He probably walked on this beach almost every single day of the first 35 years that he lived here, always with an assortment of dogs in tow. And when he lost access to walking on the beach 15 years ago, he continued to get as close as he could. He was a very familiar sight on his buggy, making his way along the gravel road behind us, still with the dogs in tow.

A death is a loss. And yet my experience of Ernie's death has not been primarily about loss. For us, his family, it felt like right timing. I think it is difficult for any of us to really appreciate how it was for Ern to loose his independence so completely, or just how well he actually bore up under those conditions, even as they worsened. When we were remembering things about Ern last night we thought of one of his old stock phrases: Right, we're off. It had connotations of his enthusiasm for action, but also meant - I'm ready and I'm going now, on my own, if no one else is. It feels like a long time since I've heard that phrase from Ern.

During the first of his two recent stints in hospital he was determined to attend the big Stephenson family saamtrek. I think, after that he was ready to go, he no longer needed to struggle on. Ern had had a very good innings. And so since his death I have found myself naturally drawn to experience and appreciate, not what I have lost, but what I have gained from being Ernie's son.

Ernie touched the many people in his life, and in particular his family and all who that encompassed and included, our family, my family. It is this that is Ernie's legacy.

So I think it is appropriate to hear what this family says about Ernie. And appropriate that we start with one of his grand children. Sebastian:

When I was about five, Ern had been in a wheelchair for about 10 years already. He made me a model fighter jet, even though he struggled to use his hands. I ran round and round the house with my new jet. I slipped in a puddle and broke the tail. Ern wasn't even mad, and he fixed it.

Ern loved birds. I think his best bird is a rock pigeon. He fed a pair of them on his deck every day.

Sometimes Ern would let Phoebe and me watch a video, as long as there was no sport on TV. One day when I wanted to switch on the TV Ern said, “Push the big button.” I did. Then he said, “Push any other button.” So I pushed a button. “No, not that button!” he yelled. Ern wasn't always so good at explaining what he meant.

We all know that Ern had a buggy. Sometimes Ern let Tom, Phoebe, Pie and me ride up and down the passage, and sometimes he even let us ride the big buggy on the road. He was very generous with his things.

Ern we are all going to miss you. You have been a great grampa to me. I will miss you a lot. Thanks for everything, Ernie.

One of the things that enabled Ern to stay on in Llandudno was the dedicated care that he received and so valued from Sylvia & Sam, from Susan, Sandra, Zelpha, Samantha, and Sarah. Tessa, Oney and I are indebted to all of you for what you gave to our dad. Thank you.

And many other friends and family helped him to stay here, including Peter and Selbi from ADT.

I would like to read some words from others, who were not able to be here today. Firstly someone from Ernie's wider Llandudno family - Shirley du Plessis:

We all loved Ernie and admired him so much for his fight against the results of his accident, his sense of humour and his warm interest in so many things. He will be much missed by us all, but at least there is the knowledge that he had a very good life.

Now Samantha, one of his granddaughters will pay her tribute to Ern:

During the Argus cycle race they close down the roads in Llandudno and the downhill skaters take advantage of this. So my friend told me to go and look at the skating website, I was a bit confused about why she told me to do so, until in amongst the photos of hard-core downhill skaters was one of my Ermie coming down the same hill in his buggie with comments like “good to see the seniors ripping up the tar” and “what a legend grampa” and for me this pretty much sums up how me and all my friends knew Ermie. He was never an effort to visit out of obligation, and a place where you had to make small talk. Instead he was just the perfect stop-off on the way to and from the beach and his doors were always open to me and any of my crazy friends, who he loved to meet.

So I just want to say thanks for always being around, for helping me with every school project and always having an abundance of sucker sticks, for putting up swings for us in your garden and even though, near the end, you couldn’t participate, for passing down your awesome lifestyle through the generations. I will miss you.

Amongst the strong associations I have of my dad and am grateful for, aspects that shaped our lives as his children are this place, Llandudno, its beauty, its beach, its community, the openness of our home to friends and family, and the extension of that to Sani our unique, shared holiday spot on the Langebaan Lagoon, my parents values of non-pretentiousness, mountains, Matroosberg, skiing and sailing.

Some words from Jenny Viotti, long time family friend from the old Sani days:

I have such special memories of both your Father and your Mother - how they introduced us to you all at your shack on Rietbay, how you children all learnt to sail together, the Easter Regattas, etc., and much, much more! Those were very special times. ‘Uncle Burn’, as my children called him, was someone very special in all our lives. It was a tragic moment when such an active man should lose the use of his legs so young. How bravely he lived the rest of his life.

And from the De Graafs in New Zealand, Erika a very dear god daughter of Ern's, and her husband Pete:

As a family we have such fond memories of holidays spent in Llandudno. Ern and Ange were always so full of life and keen to be in on any activity - lunch on the deck , building sandcastles on the beach and beer shandies at sunset after walks to Sandy Bay (with numerous dogs in tow). And later on, after his accident, Ern was always keen to hear about our adventures, never feeling sorry for himself – just excited for us.

It is the end of an era for us all. You’ve lost an amazing father and grandfather, I have lost a much-loved Uncle and Godfather and Pete has lost a good friend.

And then from someone who probably best illustrates the openness of Ern and Angie's home: PD, the son of friends from England, who came to stay for a week or two and ended up staying in our home for 10 years. PD and his wife Lily in Australia:

Ernie was unique in every way and a very special person - he was my boss and our best man. Ernie had a wonderful sense of humour - he was a no-nonsense person and was often the instigator of all sorts of projects, a great motivator to get family and friends together. He loved his outdoors and his independence and we all know how difficult the last 15 years will have been for him and, despite what he endured, he still always remained the Ernie we all knew. We will all really miss you Uncle Trouble!

On Sunday afternoon, Tessa and Dave with Mico, and Sandra, Sebastian, Pheobe and I with Alex sailed into this bay. And that we could do so, was thanks in many ways to Ern and to Sani and it felt like a fitting tribute to some of what he has made possible for us. But it felt strange not to be able to phone him so that he could look out at us from his deck.

And then from the person who carries forward the Lanz family name, Ernest John or EJ, will read his father Brian's tribute to Ernie:

(EJ told us that his father was so determined that the family name go forward, that he was going to be named Ernest John regardless of whether he was born a boy or a girl!)

"Jokkie" as I knew him was always the brave, adventurous Uncle who did things like riding motorbikes, skiing, hiking, sailing, climbing mountains etc. I'm not sure whether I admired him or thought he was a bit overboard. Nevertheless life around him was always exciting. Except for skiing, I remember doing all of those things with him at various times over the years.

More recently we were on opposite sides of the Currie Cup Rugby spectrum. He was a staunch STORMERS and WP supporter and I was a SHARK. But we would support each other's teams against the BULLS. I will miss the weekly telephone calls to discuss the weekend's rugby.

And, if there is a Heaven, I'm sure Ernie is busy hiking from one side to the other on perfectly GOOD LEGS with Angie and their numerous dogs in tow!

RIP JOKKIE

I think we would be doing Ernie's memory a dis-service if we only said sweet things about him and did not acknowledge that he could also be a hell of a difficult bugger. He was not known for excess patience. But these aspects were very much part of the character that he was, and he carried them with a certain grace. It was the difficult bugger in him that motivated a joke between Sandra and Ernie. Sandra told him, when she and I got married, that she was marrying me on condition that I did not turn out like him. Well Sandra its probably too late now, but, judging by what has been said of him today, you could have done a hell of a lot worse!

The last tribute to be read out is from the only grand child who ever got to cash in her 'Olifants points' from Ernie. Oney will read Lauren's tribute:

On the 21st of June I flew half away across the globe. I arrived in a city atop a mountain. I arrived in a place were no one spoke English and dried lama can be bought on the street corner. But it was on the 28th of June that the world I knew changed. Suddenly I live in a world without you in it. You have been a constant all my life. You have been one of the greatest influences in my life. I am scared for what losing you means to my understanding of self, for you are inextricably linked with my growing up, my outlook on life, and with who I am. I will miss you so much.

But that is just my own selfish take on things. I know wherever you are you are light on your feet, and God knows that's something you've waited a long time for, so you'll be pleased to know I've poured myself a whiskey and soda, and I'm toasting to that.

PS. On Thursday I cycled down the infamous death road in Bolivia, one of the coolest things I've ever done; thanks for teaching me to ride a bike.

We will be adding a second plaque to Angie's Bench, up the road here. And it will now no longer be just Angie's bench – it will be Ernie and Angie's Bench.

Apparently on one of his last days, in the hospital when Ern was struggling to talk he had said something that seemed to be – Angie is waiting for me. Someone who knows him very well commented that if he had been more himself he would more likely have said: Shit man Angela, can't you see I'm coming!

That bench in its stunning location, has become a very special place to me and to Tessa and to Oney, and many others, strangers included, like to pause on it a while. If you don't yet know the bench I encourage you to visit it. I try to every time I am in Llandudno. I love to sit there looking out across this beach, looking back at the house we grew up in, thinking. From that vantage we will inevitably think about what we have lost. But much more importantly we will think about all that we have gained.

Thank you Ern for what you have given me, for what you have given all of us. Farewell.

After the tribute we made our way down to the beach to cast flowers into the sea for Ernie.

Workers Day

2013-05-16T08:11:00.001+02:00

I walked home along the Jonkershoek Road after we spent the evening together. There were no cars on the road. It was beautiful and cold and crisp. My down jacket was puffed around me and my beanie pulled low, so the cold against my face and nose, was pleasing rather than a discomfort. I walked slowly and looked at the stars and thought. I was happy to be walking rather than driving. Like so much about my life, it felt like a privilege, the silence, the darkness, the space, the stars wide overhead. I mulled over what I had said about myself. I thought about what it meant. When we talked together, I struggled to think of anything, really, to say about my life. Yes, it is good. But you know that.

Sandra had left the solar jar out for me to light my way onto our stoep, rather than the electric light which would shine in her eyes through the curtain-less windows of our bedroom. Once I reached home, stepped into the warmth of our house, looked at Sandra and the children, asleep in their beds, the meaning of what I had been saying seemed to distil. And out of that came a question: Could I be leading a better life? Could I be striving for something greater, not in a grand sense, but perhaps in little ways?

Robert Browning said that "a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" So much of what I have sought now seems to be within my grasp, that I wonder where I should be reaching. And yet I am wary to become trapped in something that is too small for me.

I am not sure what the answer is to my question. It could be yes and it could be no. It could be both yes and no.

Then I remembered something I could have told you about my life: On the Worker's Day public holiday we went to Stofbergsfontein. We went on Tuesday night, stayed Wednesday and then Thursday as well. The kids missed a day of school. We only returned home on Thursday night. It was too beautiful to leave. As it always is.

The water of the lagoon is pure blue and its sand is pure white. There is a spit made of this sand that emerges on the falling tide, with the very deepest blue of the channel flowing past it. The geometry of the juxtaposition of these two colours, the acute white angle piercing the curved blue flow is far more beautiful than I can describe. One can walk out onto this spit, away from the land, out across this transitional surface that is swept clean twice a day, leaving a long line of footprints, and dive directly into the deep flow of the channel. It is the best place to swim.

On Workers Day my sister and I, neither of us really workers, walk out onto the spit together. We seldom do things together, just the two of us, but we both love the aesthetics of the spit, and the invitation of it draws me out from my book. The water is cold enough to mark a transition, but warm enough to be pleasant. Immersion is magnificent. What is most noticeable to me though, in the saltiness, is my buoyancy. I seem to float high on the flat surface, without effort.

I remember as a child the difficulty I had to float on my back. Afraid to let my head float as far back as it should, I would hunch up to protect myself, and so sink. I remember being told to trust, to extend myself backwards, but it was too far beyond what felt safe, and I couldn't do it.

Perhaps when you are older, you float more easily. But I don't ever remember floating this easily. I roll over onto my back, spread my arms out wide, neither grasping nor reaching, and float. My ears are submerged in the liquidity of underwater sounds: blue noise. I can feel the sun's autumn warmth through the pale, red skin of my eyelids. Without moving a single muscle, I flow gently outwards on the tide.

All photos by Catherine Hofmeyr

New year greetings

2013-01-10T00:11:00.002+02:00

Rim of Africa: Day 9

2012-12-16T23:41:00.003+02:00

Day 9 (21): Roelof's Dam to Vredelust Dam, Kouebokkeveldberge

If each of the 7 billion of us on this planet could possibly walk along the western edge of the high expanse of water that is Roelof's Dam, at dawn, and in silence, I think it would change the course of our evolution. Unfortunately most cannot, and of those who can, few will choose to. I am grateful that I am among those who can.

Photo: Galeo Saintz

Along the shoreline, the turbulent ruggedness of quartzite butts up against a motionless serenity that reflects whole mountain ranges and skies. A meeting of opposites in the pure air of altitude. We leave the water behind us and below, and ascend into the ridges. Before we begin the steep descent beyond Roelof's Berg, we reach a high point from which we can look both forwards and backwards along our journey. Tafelberg stands like a beacon on the most distant skyline - five days walking behind us. Below us is the secluded, hollow beauty of Disa Valley, awaiting us, and across it, the precipitous pinnacle of Olifants River Dome, pointing skywards. Even on this high ridge, the air is still.

Photo: Charles Powne

This morning's silence, wandering across the bones of our earth, is the perfect space to reflect on the skeletal in one's life. This is the poem it inspires:

My life is the layers of quartzite over which I walk,

jagged and exposed here on the ridge-lines that they hold,

important for now,

and beautiful,

forged in a heaving in-breath

on the other side of time and experience,

a gathering of particles,

pressed together,

hard.

My birth is the slow weathering of what is above me,

a wearing away, a release of pressure,

a rising to the light,

a crack,

made ready for life.

My growing is a precarious balance,

a falling down, a sculpting,

a chisel strike by life's large hands,

shards of shattered stone, the smell of flint.

And what remains, stands proud on the skyline.

My ageing is the dissolution

of the physicality of what holds me together,

a rusting into rivers,

a salty journey to the sea.

And then a re-gathering of particles

far below me.

And amongst them, perhaps,

a small rounded nugget of quartz,

smooth and milky white,

my hardest, strongest part,

released into the gathering

and the heaving in-breath

of the next generation of mountains.

Photo: Charles Powne

Rim of Africa: Day 8

2012-11-12T17:12:00.002+02:00

Day 8 (20*): Elandskloof to Roelof's Dam, Kouebokkeveldberge

photo: Ann Reilly

* The day number is that particular day's walk as it fits into the 26 day journey of the Rim of Africa from Pakhuis to Montagu. I was not there for every stage of this journey this season. After completing stages 1 and 3, I started again at the beginning to lead a second group through the 12 days of stages 1 and 2. So the number in brackets is the number of my own day on the trail this season out of a total of 24 days, and several hundred kilometers through the most beautiful mountains on earth.

At the very beginning of stage Two of the Rim of Africa, as we transition into the Kouebokkeveld Mountains, on a farm called Tuinskloof, there is a tree that is magical. To experience its magic you must do this:
You must arrive around midday after walking out of the Cederberg from Zuurvlakte. You must push yourself through the tangle of tall bush that crowds the little stream in front of the tree, taking care not to step into the small, dark pools hidden there in the depths. You must lay down your pack in the tree's deep shade. You must settle yourself into its thick mat of discarded leaves, beneath its drooping boughs, and feel around there for branches that might poke through. Then you must lie on your back and stare straight upwards through layers of soft green, beyond which you know is the blue sky and the yellow sun. And you will not have long to wait.

photo: Ann Reilly

In all the times we have been there, the tree has never failed to work its magic, to sprinkle down drowsiness woven through attunement to cyclical threads of labour and rest. It is a Sabbath tree that we reach on the seventh day of our journey. And under it we always sleep, soundly and deeply for several hours, through the hottest part of the day.

photo: Ann Reilly

On the morning of the eight day we awake under trees as well. Slowly. Gentle old oaks, soft grass below them, the river running next to them over rounded rocks.

Trees are very much a part of this journey and so to start the silence on day 8, I read something that was inspired by trees:

If we are to straddle above and below,

within and without,

let us befriend trees.

For it is trees that reach both downwards,

and upwards,

that hold both the dark and dirty, beautiful complexity,

of what lies below us in the soil,

with their roots,

and the soft caresses of sunlight and wind,

that lie above us,

with their leaves.

photo: Geleo Saintz

We end the silence, over the old pass, each one of us individually, as we enter the water of the stunning pools there. In the noise of the running water, there is no chance to read the poem I have written while walking the pass, a poem inspired by those other, iconic and beautiful trees that we have now left behind us in the Cederberg. In the evening after dark, when we are seated, with no trees, slightly sheltered by a rocky ridge from the high, cool breeze, I read my poem:

Can I really claim the cedars as my kin?

See in their curved trunks, the familiar bridge of a nose,

the dappled skin of my father's thighs,

in their bark?

Is the way they hold themselves,

against the wind,

not a gesture that was my mother's?

The flicker of agitation in the thin leaves,

held by the wood's strong grain,

the same flicker that now inhabits my hands, too.

But do these entitle me to call them

brother tree and sister cedar?

To graft myself within the branches of their lineage?

I do not know if I can claim that my roots probe this rock

and thin soil as deeply as theirs.

But I do know the nourishment I draw there

and how the same place sustains us.

I do know that I share an aspiration

for my seeds, like theirs,

to germinate amongst such beauty.

I do know that I see in them something familial.

And I know that it is when I am amongst them,

that I feel most at home.

Rim of Africa: Day 15

2012-10-27T09:12:00.000+02:00

Photo: Galeo Saintz

Tomorrow I go back to the mountains, back to Pakhuisberg, back to begin another cycle in the journey, to lead a new group of walkers southwards on the Rim. I have not yet posted all my poems from the previous stages I walked. I have not found the time, here in the world, where time and I relate so differently. But before I go, I want to post the poem that is my favourite from the journey so far.

Day 15: Panorama to Ceres Dam, Agter Witzenberg

In the soft green oasis of Panorama, the line of mountains across the rising sun is inverted perfectly in the still waters of the dam. Jess starts today's silent walk by asking us to contemplate the route we will take through this valley, sandwiched between mountain ranges. "Be aware of the tamed land through which you walk, bordered on each side by the wild mountains", she says. The apple trees trained on wires into neat rows versus the untidy, jagged tumble of fynbos diversity. "And answer this as you walk: what within me has been tamed and what is wild?"

We have always walked this morning's route along the valley floor. We have contemplated a different route across the mountain ridge to the west, and this year I had planned to walk it. But after a long previous day and a long day ahead of us, I had decided it would be safer to stick to the route that I knew. And so we left Panorama in silence, fully intending to do that.

Photo: Galeo Saintz

I ended the morning's silence with these words: "We find ourselves, unexpectedly this morning, instead of down in the valley, on top of a mountain. And so I owe you an explanation, which I will give you by way of a poem."

Where we stood, the ridge line ran due south. To the east the warm morning sun filled the valley. To the west was nothing but whiteness - a rising, swirling cloud bank stretching to the edge of the world. In this magnificent spot, I read my poem:

I walk a valley passage,

comfortable enough,

but both the east and west of me are wild.

I am close enough to it that the klipspringers light dance steps

pierce the bulldozer's heavy spoor.

Close enough that its sharp pungence pierces the west side of my soul.

My heart strains at the leash.

There is a call that is not the call of the wild.

Its single tone monotonous,

held for too long.

At last it lowers, and trails off,

defeated by silence.

And then there is the briefest, narrow gap.

My heart strains forward, full alert.

The moment is not so much decision as instinct.

My heart makes a dash to the west,

into the gap

and the leash is broken.

When the siren sounds again,

signalling the call back to labour,

the end of breakfast in the valley below,

my heart is already far beyond and above that call,

with no master now,

but the wild.

Rim of Africa: Day 5

2012-10-23T23:58:00.002+02:00

Day 5: Welbedacht to Bokkveldskloof

Photo: Galeo Saintz

Not long after we've left camp, but long enough for the water basin to no longer freeze over again once your hands are washed, we pass the pool near Driehoek. It is not an easy pool to simply walk past, as we discovered last year. I will not be the one to suggest it this time, but I am very happy when Linda does. A day that starts with a swim in a pool like this, can only become one of the very best of days.

Over the river we gather to marvel at a dung beetle. It doesn't so much as pause in its industriousness, does not for a moment hesitate to question the value of its work. At Eikeboom, something in the soil at my feet catches my eye. It is a coin, worn and thin - a 1942 South African tikkie, with a protea on the front. I wonder at how long it has lain buried there. I wonder at what brought it to the surface for me to find.

All of this feeds into the poem that comes to me as we walk silently up the track into Tierkloof,

past the unseen plaque to the young man who drowned in the stream, a foot jammed between boulders, his friends helpless around him and the river rising ever so slowly up and up, past the old stone leopard trap that gave the kloof its name from a time when our relationship with those graceful predators was different. The beautiful track with its dry-stone walls has the quality of a labyrinth about it, a journey of repeated arcs this way and then that. This way and then that we are carried, slowly and gently to a vantage point from where to look into our lives. The tikkie in my pocket and the invite that someone accompany us on this walk, reminds me of my mother. I know she would have loved this place.

I finish my poem as the kettle boils on the little cement bridge with the stream rushing below it through water plants of the most brilliant green. Morning tea. But it is only much later, near the end of the day, that I read it. For I have something else to share on this walk - a place, not a poem.

Photo: Galeo Saintz

I love the anticipation of leading people into this place, the boulders they must bow under, the darkness removed from the sun's glare, the quiet, their wondering, "Is this it?". And then the centre. The sacred coming together of rock and cedar. Just as it is.

The sun is already behind Sneeuberg, and Bokkveldskloof is in deep shadow by the time I close my day with another icy swim. Then in the darkness after supper, I am ready to read my morning's poem:

The paths that you walk into life will outlive you,

they are what the earth will remember you by,

they are your genes scattered like ashes

across the great landscapes

in memory of your brief passing,

your wild oats.

Be mindful of where you tread.

Others have walked them before you,

but it is you that turned the stone

that sent the small, tail-less creature scuttling for other cover.

It is your weight that gently bruised the buchu bush

and released it oily scent into the hot, still air.

It was a drop of cool, sweet water

from your scooped hand

that wet the stones at your feet.

Your winter morning breath

that whitened the air before you.

Be mindful of where you tread.

The paths that you walk into life will outlive you,

Others have walked them before you,

and still others will follow.

Be mindful of where you tread.

Make your passing like the bright sparks of protea seeds,

released into a fire blackened landscape,

alight with the certainty of the very first bird song,

to anticipate the dawn,

bequeath each step to the path behind you,

age, like the cedar

that deepens its perfume with time,

attune yourself, like the nightjar,

to the dark.

Be mindful of where you tread.

Rim of Africa: Day 2

2012-10-21T08:56:00.000+02:00

Day 2: Pakhuis to Brugkraal

Photo: Adele Labuscagne

We are descending the pass with Heuningvlei in the valley below. It is warm. I can feel the salt on my skin from the uphill behind us. I have been thinking about time, out here on the trail, and about the feeling of moving into the wide open space around us. The track curves and runs south of some towering rocks that throw welcome shade across it. The little stream, that was dry in January, rushes below. I pause here and the group slowly gathers as each one arrives, stops, takes off their backpack, settles in, and stares outwards. The stream and the birds are part of the silence. All else is as still as the ancient cedars in the rocky koppies above us. My poem is ready:

Be friendly out here,

if you meet time and if you meet space. Smile.

Even invite them in, sit with them,

hear them out.

Perhaps you have encountered them before

in another place

and they have both appeared a little brash for your liking,

full of themselves,

unyielding, small-minded even.

But like all of us

they have their bad days

and their good. Give

them another chance, here

where they are more at ease,

here where you may glimpse another side of them.

On those days when the sun rises silently,

you may find them nicer, more approachable,

and as the sun climbs, still silent,

you may warm to them.

On the very best of days, they dance,

and when they move together, time and space,

across the floor of these wide landscapes,

they dance all of this into being.

You will want to be there on such days,
intimate enough,
to join them in their dance.

Rim of Africa: starting the journey

2012-10-17T23:10:00.000+02:00

October is Rim of Africa month for me. In October the Cape Fold Mountains are at their best. The daytime temperatures are not yet too hot, the night times no longer too cold, the water flows strongly in each stream and the fynbos is ablaze with its diversity of flower and scent.

Being a trail leader on the Rim of Africa mountain passage is, every year, an extraordinary experience for me and an amazing privilege.
It is a celebration of the incredible beauty of the mountains I love most, the Cederberg, and going south, the Kouebokkeveldberge, Skurweberge, Witzenberge ... It is a chance to get fabulously dirty and stay that way for days on end. It is an embracing of the intense, tight-skinned, tingling warmth of emerging from high mountain rock pools, of cold, black, star-filled nights and warm, blue days. It is a chance to settle into a natural, clock-less rhythm measured only by sunrises, sunsets and star tracks, by passes on the skyline in front of us that become passes behind us, by valleys navigated, rivers crossed. It is a chance not only to experience all this for myself, but to share it, intensely, with others, others whose hearts are also set on fire by being there. And it is a chance for silence.

Each day on trail we walk for a part of it together in silence. In the feedback we get from walkers, this is one of their most valuable and treasured aspects of the trail. Ours is a world that is starved of silence, and it shows. The Rim of Africa is one source of nourishment to satisfy that starvation.

As trail leaders we start these silences, usually with a piece of poetry. And we end them a few hours later with another. This year I led the group into the start at Pakhuis Pass, for some the beginning of a 26 day walk southwards, into that wide landscape of scattered rock. As we walked along the winding donkey track which anticipates the beauty of what I know lies ahead on the journey, a spark of mountain inspiration was lit within me. And as I walked, that spark became a poem, scribbled into my red moleskine book while walking through that magical land. And when the silence was ready to end, my poem too, was ready.

During each silence that I led in the days that followed, I wrote a poem as I walked, and read it to the group to end.

For the next few days on my blog, I will post these poems that I wrote in the silent times. But first there is the start.

It has become a Rim of Africa tradition that the walkers are led into their journey and their first silence of the trail, with part of a poem that I wrote several years ago for my godson, Matthew. On the 2nd of October this year, 15 of us gathered a little way up the donkey track. We filled our water at the little stream that crosses it there. I held Ivan's trusty staff in my hand, newly tied with 15 pieces of red cord, binding each of our hopes and intentions into a shared journey. I remembered the time a few years back when we almost lost the staff, crossing the Olifants River. Ivan leapt into the water in his clothes to retrieve it as it disappeared down a rapid. It was precious to him, far more precious than keeping dry. Now I hold it proudly and I voice these lines into the stillness once again:

I don't know what weight and depth and solidity the earth,

the soil, the rocks, the mountains,

will impart on you.

I know only that they will.

I don't know what flow and movement and shape the waters,

oozing from the earth, bubbling in streams, tumbling from waterfalls

and crashing on the shore,

will share with you.

I know only that they will.

I don't know what songs of airy flight the winds,

sometimes howling, sometimes whispering gently,

will inspire in you.

I know only that they will.

I don't know what higher thoughts and frequencies and visions

the sun's yellow heat will burn into you,

and by its absence in the night,

let smoulder in your darkness.

I know only that it will.

For my Father on his 80th birthday

2012-07-22T11:00:00.000+02:00

Ernie didn't want gifts. He doesn't need things. But as his son, I wanted to give him something. I wanted to give him something that is worthy of this milestone, and worthy of this man. And it couldn't be green bananas. What I decided on were words. And so I have written one of my pieces for my dad, for this day. That is my gift to you, Ernie:

The day after my birthday this year, I stood on top of Little Lion's head with all six of your grandchildren. The shadow was already being drawn across the Hout Bay valley. Llandudno and its surrounding mountain side glowed in the rich, late light of a beautiful, bright, winter's afternoon. And it glowed too in the light of my memory.

You were not with us. Not because you would not have loved to be. But because that is how it is. What I was able to appreciate though, looking down upon where you were sitting in your wheel chair in front of the fire that Zulpha had made you, looking down on the Llandudno that was my childhood home, is that you had been there with me before, many times. Klein Leeukoppie was probably the first mountain that I loved, on family weekend trips to the top, the excitement of the rock scrambles near the end, the anxious whining of the dogs, and then the achievement of that definitive little summit in the centre of my world.

I was lucky enough to grow up in Llandudno with a father who was around, who had a workshop and a garden, who was there to fix my bicycle, who mowed his own lawn, walked on the beach with us, ate evening meals with us, who sat around the radio, Friday evenings, listening to Squad Cars and sharing the treats he brought home for us.

When I think back, I remember the things that I think we both loved best: time spent at Sani, boats and sailing, weekends to Matroosberg, when we left the city in the dark, full of anticipation of snow. These were the things you loved to do with friends and with your family. Both Sani and Matroosberg were shared with a community of people with a common enjoyment and appreciation of the place and the activities. Sailing, walking, diving, skiing, being outdoors in the wilds.

I remember too the garden on weekends, you tinkering amongst tools in your garage, the sound of the mower, the smell of cut grass, the fire burning garden rubbish, smoke rising into a blue sky.

You had your favourite old clothes that you gardened in. Wellington boots much wider than the legs below your short bottoms and your purple Makhita cap. Image did not matter. Fashion never counted for much. In the childhood I remember, it was things of enduring importance that mattered.

You socialised through activity and place and family. Around the table at Matroosberg and Sani. I remember being squeezed next to you on the red plastic cushions of the Matroosberg bench. I was of that age when fathers are still invincible. I liked being there, snug beside you, and surrounded by the warmth of jovial adult conversation. Outside darkness was settling and the snow crunched underfoot.

There were so many long evenings around the big, cement Sani braai. Sometimes with the combi seats drawn close to the fire and the big, heavy doors rattling in the north wester. Mostly they were open and we drifted between inside and out. Expeditions took us wood collecting on Duckit's Beach and along the endless 16 miles of beach, before there were roads that could take us there.

There were family braais at Llandudno, the round cable-reel table, that you painted green, the large, rough granite boulders containing the fire, rolled into place by you long ago. This is the world that you built for us. Common to all of it is a choice of lifestyle, a willingness to seek it out, the warmth of community and an understanding that what is good in life is not a commodity of a consumerist society.

We spent many hours on your Hobie together, just you and I and the expanse and beauty of the Langebaan lagoon, flat, blue water and the low, pale, calcrete landscape beyond. In your yellow sailing jacket and bleached, salt encrusted hat, you took me beyond the range of where I could explore on my own. We ventured up the lagoon to what seemed to me like distant shores, Oostewal, Postberg, and out towards the mouth beyond Salamander Bay, with the huge swells from the open ocean sweeping across it. It was in those times that I learnt about balance and how to respond to the wind. I remember you showing me how to determine a collision course, when the land stays still behind an approaching boat.

Later when I was older, and Sani was no more, we explored many other places together. We hiked through the Riet River and Fish River Canyons . We encountered the thrill of leopard up close in the grassy foothills of Cathedral Peak. In your combi we explored Namibia, the soaring granite of Spitzkoppe. We cycled down the winding passes of the Baviaanskloof together, and savoured the wilderness solitude of Rooihoek. We roamed the wilds of the Botswana bush and the islands of the Delta. And even after your accident, we took your combi into the Richtersveld. These are things of value to have done together.

Time reverses roles. You must now lean on me. And it is I that can encourage you out beyond the limitations that are imposed on you, up Constantia Neck, along the Rocket Road, to the natural history museum. These too have been good times, though we go much slower than we once did and we stay much closer to home.

When I visit with my family, we still sit around the same stinkwood dining room table that I sat around almost every evening of my childhood. But it is higher now. You have put blocks under the legs. And now I sit in what was always mother's place.

By example you and mother taught me to love and value what I now love in life: unpretentiousness, uncomplicated warmth of a close community of friends and family, the simple pleasures of life, a love of adventure in the great outdoors, and a willingness to go beyond the places where others crowd, to find the Sanis, Matroosbergs and Riet River Canyons of life.

That morning in Tokai Forest, doing what you loved, your life changed very suddenly. You have way surpassed my expectations in adapting to that change and making a different life for yourself, with what you now have. You have never dwelt on what was not to be.

By not being with us on Little Lion's Head you have taught me this: to not be trapped by what is not, no matter how much you might want it to be, but rather to embrace what is.

There is an uncomplicated stability to our family that is admirable. For me it has always been there and endures. I will do what I can, as you did, to ensure that it endures another generation, and another.

All these memories and the thoughts and feelings they invoke, all this is really a long way of saying simply: you have been a good father to me, and it is the certainty of that that I celebrate today.

Tide & Time

2012-06-13T11:26:00.000+02:00

I am old enough, now, to remember things that no longer exist in my world, or that have been irrevocably changed: silver metal ticky boxes (as my mother used to call them) with concertina doors, and heavy, black telephones inside that actually required you to turn a dial; military conscription; my mother herself. All of these were once a part of my life.

I am also old enough, now, to see the extent to which I am the sum of my experiences.

I saw out the end of my conscription years at the age of 19, mostly in a 4 by 4 meter room on the periphery of a large navel base with several other conscripts, and the three men who were in charge of us. Long days of languishing with little to do were punctuated from time to time by a regularly repeated decision to re-paint one of the harbour patrol boats, of which our unit was in charge. The decision to paint had very little to do with the needs of the boat, and although days of boredom stretched endlessly before us, with typical military logic, the decision once made, had to be implemented immediately.

I hated painting the boats, more than I hated the boredom of not painting them. But the decision had been made and the first task was to get the boat out of the water. There was a problem, though. It was spring low. The boats lay listlessly against the floating dock, far below the quay and beyond the reach of the slipway. This situation caused some discussion and some head scratching amongst the three men. They came up with elaborate solutions, eventually deciding to employ a crane to lift the boat directly onto the quay. To me the answer was completely clear: Simply wait for the tide to come in. But there was generally a clash between my world view and theirs, and they saw little merit in my suggestion.

It felt to me that during most of my time at Saldanha I was engaged, against my will, in painting the world grey. It didn't feel terribly constructive, or liberating. As I sit here writing and thinking, there are two memories of particular incidents during my time there, that come to mind. And these two memories invoke more or less opposite emotional responses in me.

The first is on a weekend. Over the weekends the three men are not there. It is unlikely that the enemy will attack over a weekend, so they can be with their families in the town, beyond the navel base. But just in case the enemy does in fact attack, we, the conscripts, are on duty. I prefer the weekends. Because the three men are not there and our base, below the hill, at the water's edge is largely deserted and peaceful. And we never paint the boats on weekends.

This weekend is during summer. It is a wind-still morning and the water stretching out into the bay and harbour is a dull, placid silver. I decide to do something I have not done before. I decide to swim out into the bay. I dive off the floating dock. As I swim, the base recedes until it no longer occupies a dominant proportion of the coastline. From here at water level, the land appears different, less important, as if it is the land that floats on the ocean, and not the other way around.

The water is not clear. It is not particularly beautiful. There is an uneasy murkiness that makes me wonder what might lurk below me in the depths. It has a faint whiff of petrol, of harbour, of caught fish. And while it moves with a certain freedom on the tides, this water is partly entrapped too, in this bay. More so since Marcus Island was joined to the mainland to create the iron ore port, which gave the mongooses free access to the penguin eggs. Such developments are generally good for some, not so good for others, good if you're a mongoose, bad if you're a penguin.

I remember, long before the iron ore jetty, the excitement with which I would sail out into this bay, with my father. Compared to the flat waters of the lagoon from which we had come, there was an unrestrained largeness and wildness about it, with the huge swells from the open ocean sweeping across it. It was a thrill for me to see the penguins here, ducking and diving amongst the mounds of moving water. They were creatures of the untamed, open ocean, not ones that we encountered around us in the still waters of the lagoon.

Some distance from the shore now, I am swimming amongst the yachts. A moored yacht, shut up and occupied only by a line of monotonously coloured cormorants, is not, in outward appearance, a thing of freedom. The hatches are securely shut against the elements, the sails and sheets furled and lashed, the knots tightened by salt and sun. Over time, all moving and see-through parts are increasingly sealed by streaks of bleached guano, white with shades of pink. The yachts are confined here, by their moorings to repeat short, pointless journeys back and forth, back and forth, and in formation with the yachts around them, at the whim of wind and tide.

And yet a yacht still holds strongly the possibility of freedom, the possibility of the open ocean, of escape. And out amongst them, I feel a sense of this freedom that is entirely invigorating.

In 1974 when I was 8 years old we went as a family to watch The Dove. I still remember scenes from the movie - when the cat was thrown from the boom into the ocean to be taken by a shark, when The Dove lay becalmed in the path of an approaching tanker. But what I remember most was the intoxicating sense of adventure and freedom, and the discovery of beauty and love out there in the wideness of the world. Robin Lee Graham was 16 when he started his 5 year voyage. The movie gave a thrilling sense of the possibilities that awaited me.

But instead of voyaging round the world at that age, I was conscripted to the navy. A year later I was transferred from the innocuous dump that was the navy base in Cape Town harbour to the innocuous dump that was the navy base in Saldanha, with the significant difference that the navy would now dominate a far larger proportion of my days and nights. It was a significant suppression of my freedom. Of course I was still hugely fortunate. Some of my friends were sent to fight a war against our countrymen. In comparison, painting boats grey, is positively constructive and liberating. But during that first call to my mother from a ticky box, with the bleakness of a year there stretching out far before me, I felt entirely hopeless.

The second incident that I remember takes place during one of the numerous re-paintings of the boats. It has none of the beauty of the first incident. I am railing against the pointlessness of re-painting the boat, again, as passively aggressive as I can risk. And for my resistance I am assigned the unpleasantly awkward underside of the boat, between the hulls. My resistance reaches a level of overwhelming frustration in the confined space. In response, the bucket of paint, balanced above me, teeters, then falls and inverts itself at the precise moment that my head is directly underneath it.

Nothing turns your world as unequivocally grey as having a bucket of navel, anti-fouling paint inverted on your head and oozing down your face and neck. Railing against the injustices of it doesn't help. I cannot even curse out loud because I must concentrate on keeping my mouth closed enough to prevent the paint from oozing into it, and yet open enough to allow me to breathe.

To the three men this was a comical diversion to the usual monotony of the day and well deserved justice for all the trouble I'd given them. Perhaps it was. Needless to say it was a humbling experience. And it took a lot of thinners as well as time to clean my head and my hair of all the paint. But it took much longer than that for me to be open to this incident's teaching.

I never made the journey that I imagined I would when I was eight, in the wake of Robin Lee Graham. Instead I turned inland to the mountains, to Stellenbosch, to Jonkershoek, and found, I think, equal measures of adventure and beauty and love here. This morning, in this coffee shop, in this town that is now my home, I am again celebrating a freedom, that has similarities to that swim amongst the yachts 26 years ago. Only this one is more enduring. No one will make me return to a pointless duty. It will be my choice to do so, or not to, and hopefully I have more wisdom to choose well, and to bring about a better outcome, without a bucket of anti-fouling paint over my head. Sometimes I wonder if I have earned this freedom. Or if I have just been bum-in-the-butter lucky.

De Oude Bank Bakkerij is styled in peeling paint, wood and warmth. Bags of stone ground flour are piled high in the loft above the expansive oven. Rich, brown, oversized loaves await collection from a wooden rack behind the counter. The chairs are squat, an odd mixture of wood, paint, metal and leather. The interior is filled with aromas of yeast and coffee, sepia tones, red cushions, beautiful, tall, black staff, and white clientèle in elegant long leather boots. Part of the roof space is open to the elements. The cobbled floor below that is wet from the rain.

It is a very different space to that 4 x 4 meter institutional room with military issue rusks in a metal cabinet, a kettle on an empty desk, an assortment of unmatched, stained and chipped mugs with silly slogans. The difference is in the deliberate intention to create interior space. This one is a space in which I can celebrate being.

But there is an irony in the black and whiteness of this long post apartheid coffee shop, for the 4 x 4 meter room was perhaps more integrated. By working in the South African military, two of the three men who were in charge of me, were supporting a regime that denied them the vote. By clinging to power through its military, the South African state would try to deny that right to their children as well. It seems bizarre that these men would be there. But it is often the detail of our lives that is most important to us - the income we earn doing what we do each day, the uniforms that we put on each morning, the status they give us. And so one might question: were they really supporting a hostile regime, or were they just ensuring that boats got painted?

De Oude Bank Bakkerij does not supply newspapers. It offers chess and backgammon instead. But a previous patron has left this morning's Business Day at my table. There is a big blob of bright red, sticky strawberry jam more or less in the middle of a front page story on the debate about whether 30% is an acceptable school pass mark. There is an oily translucence spreading out around the blob of jam into the surrounding print. And it has spread inside, through several pages, through a story on Julius Malema, a complaining statement issued by the national youth development agency, and a story on the unfolding of the Joule, the dream that was to be South Africa's electrical car of the future. For fear of the jam spreading even more, beyond the newspaper, I must fold it deftly and with conviction at each page change, in the way that I used to admire my father doing when I was young. Near the middle of the paper, where the strawberry jam has not yet reached, is a piece on Mandela.

Reading the newspaper leaves me wondering about our world. Direction, it seems to me, is often dictated purely by the whims of people who happen to be influential at the time. Perhaps God does worse than play dice. Perhaps he or she leaves the unfolding of life, to people. To us. Then again is it so different? The whims of people and the rolling of a dice? Dice is at least more equitable, and suffused with a certain elegant, mathematical intelligence. But here is a difference: while we cannot be held responsible for the roll of a dice, we are obliged, at least by decency, to take responsibility for our whims.

The newspaper and my memories of the navy mix in my mind, and I find myself wondering to what extent we are all just re-painting boats? To what extent is the media, the education system, the government, the economy, simply supporting an arbitrary decision, a whim, to re-paint boats, not for the needs of the boats, but for some need that has been created in the huge, unwieldy, system that is our society?

If, when I was in the navy, I had been assigned to being a chef, instead of to painting boats, my day to day activity might have been more purposeful. On weekends I would have fried eggs, lots of them, slightly discoloured and oily, laid out in rows in the unexciting, metallic silver of the bain maries. It is true, there is a point to preparing eggs, because people are hungry and need breakfast. But if one is cooking eggs only for people who are eating them, only because they are doing nothing more useful than re-paining boats that don't need it, then the foundation of purpose becomes somewhat shaky. And in different contexts too, such a search for purpose often ends in disappointment. So much of our effort simply spirals inwards. Where is it getting us? And to what end?

This is not how I felt the first time I went to De Oude Bank Bakkerij. The first time all I read, over my coffee, was Fritz's beautiful soliloquy about bread, handwritten on the back of the menu. I left that time much more hopeful about our world. And it is that, most of all, that makes me come back. That and the chocolate bread sticks.

Can our direction be wiser, less based upon someone else's whim? Of course there is a system, but we can choose our engagement with it. Before I leave I ask myself this: How much of what I do is simply re-painting boats, and how much is swimming, out beyond the confines of captivity, amongst yachts?

Towards the three men who largely controlled my life at Saldanha, I would be more generous now, at 45 than I was at 19. Who wouldn't? If I criticised them now, and I criticised them plenty at 19, now it would be only for this: for insufficiently imagining a better world. Not only for others, but for them. Not only for the future, but for then. I would criticise them for that, and of course, for not simply waiting for the coming in of the tide.

Into unknown depths, again

2012-05-11T13:05:00.000+02:00

Last night I listened to my friend Rob tell of a dream. The dream is simple. He is standing on the shore when he is engulfed by a huge wave crashing over him. Rob, like me, is in mid-life. For as long as I have known him, I have admired his engagement with life. Enthusiastically direct, incredibly honest and simultaneously simple and profound.

We both know a little of Jung's thinking on dreams. My personal belief is that the value of dreams, like so much else in life, is not in any inherent meaning that they might hold, but in the meaning that is created through our own engagement with them. And what is probably most telling in this, is whatever emotional responses a dream invokes in us.

In the silent pause when Rob finishes his story, I suddenly see something, with absolute clarity, which has perplexed me for ten years. What I see so clearly is the meaning of the first story dated in this blog, Into unknown depths, which happens to be (because I do not post pieces chronologically) the last piece before this one that I posted.

The on-going creation of this blog, over the last several weeks has been an amazing, surprising and sometimes totally absorbing experience for me. It is certainly feeding something in me and I know, from the amazing responses I have received to it, some overwhelming, that it is feeding something in others as well. I am extremely chuffed that my stories have managed to entertain, move, and inspire so many people. I have a vague sense that something in this may be much bigger than I anticipated when I posted the first 2 stories.

What I have come to hope more lately, is that this blog might tell a larger story, that not only will each piece tell a story that I hope has beauty and meaning and even inspiration, but that the pieces, as they weave together into a chronological sequence, might tell a larger story, which may turn out to be the blog's real value.

For what I saw in the silence after Rob's story, was how the intense and terrifying symbolism of Into unknown depths, which had perplexed me for so long, perfectly mirrored a larger story taking place over a longer period. And how the journey in that story, like the journeys in all quest stories, is one that, in the different ways we choose to, we must all make.

Boulder hopping through time

2012-04-13T05:54:00.000+02:00

It has become something of a spontaneous custom in our family to have a short de-brief after a particular experience. Phoebe is often the initiator of these. At eight she takes on a family facilitator role with proficiency. "So how did that make you feel?", she might ask. Often her brief is, "What was the best part of your...?" and sometimes it includes, "What was the worst part?" We take time to go around listening to each one's input, and Phoebe ensures that each of us is fairly heard. On this occasion, around our large kitchen table with its exquisite cypress grain, we each have two turns, a chance to name the two best things from our weekend in the mountains.

For me there are many beautiful moments to choose from, for this is what I love best - sleeping out under the stars with my family and friends in the wild, rugged beauty of our Cape Mountains. I think through the days of crystal clear mountain pools and star filled, silent nights. And I decide on two particular moments. The one is a moment of aloneness. Mine often are. The other moment, though, I am with my son.

After a weekend in the timelessness of the mountains I am also pondering time. I think about how it would be intriguing to try and identify the exact moment, to shave away the moments each side of it, and so to arrive at that single, very best moment, the fulcrum point between its past and its future, that when shaved right down, no longer exists within time at all.

Was it that moment I first pulled over the waterfall and first set eyes on the place? Was it a few moments later once the perfection of the place had sunken in? Was it the moment I dived, suspended between the warm, smooth solidity of stone and the bright, cold, deep clarity of the water? And of the other moment, the second one, is it as his head surfaces and he whoops? Is it the beginning of the whoop? Or is it the end of it?

We set off for the day, from where we have camped, to explore higher up into the kloof, a deep passage that takes us towards the heart of these mountains. All seven of us are bare foot and eager, boulder hopping over smoothly rounded rocks. The going is leisurely, with many playful distractions. We lunch at a gorgeous spot, and afterwards, four of us continue to the beautiful, big pools higher up. When the others return I am left alone with a glorious opportunity to explore previously untrodden territory for me, into the narrows of the kloof ahead.

As I journey inwards, I come across, from time to time, rocks that have fallen into the gorge from the cliffs above, some of them very recently. They are distinctly out of place here, in these rocks amongst which they have landed. They are rough and course, still immature in their relationship with water. Their presence is a little displeasing amongst the rounded beauty of the other boulders, lovingly sculpted by water and time. And yet they are a bridge into the present from this long, long past. Each falling rock is a tick of the second hand on the geological clock.

This kloof is not the result of cataclysmic events. It is simply the result of an enduring relationship between this mountain and this soft and steadily flowing water. Nature has time, an incomprehensible vastness of time. Perhaps she operates even beyond time. We, however can make no sense of such an enduring relationship. Maybe to understand something of it, we must abandon our notions of time to the eternity of the present. This kloof reminds me of something I have long remembered from Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, about how the river is always at every point along its passage, at every moment.

Boulder hopping up a kloof is something of an art. You need to link pathways together from one rock to the next, and the next. You can seldom see too far ahead, and so must trust the unfolding of these pathways. Some jumps are harder to make than others. Sometimes you reach a dead-end. Sometimes you fall.

When boulder hopping, unlike in life, I like the challenge of going as fast as I can, so that the future unfolds in the moment - no planning, no pausing, just a stream of conscious movement, and balance. There is a direct dealing with whatever opportunities and obstacles come at me, and if I am lucky, I enter that passage through time where, despite the momentum carrying me forward, the past and the future become inconsequential and all that matters is the choice of where to jump to now. In this flow there is no thought of what the future might hold and no expectation of it.

But I cannot retain such pace for very long and so the journey involves other ways of moving. An easier paced wandering, pausing, swimming. In my memory I hold a remark from a friend about the upper reaches of the kloof, about a particularly beautiful spot. And so I find that, in the back of my mind, I am plagued by wondering whether I have arrived there yet, or whether it is just around the corner, or the next. Expectations do that. They blur your view of what is directly in front of you, and some of the clarity of what you see is lost. I once spent a weekend in one of the most gorgeous places on earth seeking something there, that existed only in my expectations: a cave that time had not yet carved out of the solid boulders that surrounded me. Perhaps I was not yet ready for the cave, perhaps it was not yet ready for me. Either way I was 200 million years out of synch.

This journey up the kloof has taken its toll on my bare feet. The last time I wore the skin on that particular spot, the soft spot between my big toe and the harder sole of my foot, was playing Marco Polo as a kid in my uncle's pool, the same pool he swum in every morning of his life until well into his eighties. Pushing off from the fine, sandpaper-like, chlorinated bottom and sides, over and over again through the heat of a Durban summer holiday.

"Marco!"

"Polo."

"Marco!"

"Polo."

But my feet are not nearly as tough as they used to be. Now even the millions of years of gentle smoothing by water is not enough to protect them. A little roughness remains hidden in these rocks. And my soles, unaccustomed to such intimacy with the earth, are worn by it.

I am forced, reluctantly, by a different measure of time, in this kloof, to turn around: the fact that night will fall, and I will not yet be back with the others. On the way back I pass a side kloof. In contrast to the main kloof, the side kloof I know nothing about, have no expectations of it. But its presence entices me, strongly, and so I let myself be drawn by it. A short way up the side kloof is a seemingly impassable waterfall.

To gain the twenty meter high rock face down which the waterfall plunges, requires climbing through a challenging looking overhang two meters from the ground. There is only really one possibility. Like it is difficult for me to turn around when the depths of an unexplored kloof still beckon me, it is difficult for me to walk past a potential route up rock, without wanting to climb it. My body longs to experience the feel of the moves that already exist in my imagination. And so now, both this obstacle itself and what lies beyond it, beckon me. And I have to climb it. My first attempt ends at the same point that the good holds do, trying to establish on the face above the overhang. I climb carefully. I need to be reasonably sure that I can reverse any moves I do, before I do them. Hanging on to the overhang, I tire quickly, and need to reverse rapidly to an uneven, rocky step-off on the ground. I try a few times, but I cannot find a way to get higher. I decide on one last attempt. I try different holds from the lip of the overhang, and I make it onto the face above, which I then follow up easily for some way.

Near the top I am faced with a choice. I can continue up within the recess of the waterfall, which offers a degree of comfort from the exposure, or I can traverse out along the most exposed part of the face to reach an easy looking ramp to the top. Either option is well within my ability as a climber, and yet a slip from anywhere up here would probably be fatal. I believe that the illusion of safety holds more risk for us than the confronting of danger head-on, and so I choose to traverse out over the drop.

A minute or two later, I pull over the top of the waterfall. It is not often that a space around us is perfect. Usually something, however small, niggles. We wish to shift something, a bit this way or that, add something, make something a little bigger, a little smaller, a little bluer. But this place is as close as I can imagine to perfection, just as it is. It is perhaps the most beautiful rock pool I have ever seen, and I've seen many.

I move slowly into its presence, in awe. For a while I lie, allowing myself to be warmed by the smooth slab of rock, edging the pool. And then I dive, indulgently

As a rock climber I am used to exposure. But I am not quite prepared for the degree of exposure that is awaiting me on my descent from this magical place. Something one learns early, if you spend time scrambling, often from hard experience, is that climbing down is usually more difficult than climbing up. So I start off carefully, very aware of the drop below. After a few meters I am relaxing into it. I hear voices and think, "Oh good, the boys are heading up kloof again. They will like to see where I have been exploring."

But when they come into view, its not the boys at all, but a fairly large hiking party of complete strangers. This is rather a surprise to me, as I thought we were the only ones in the kloof. And my surprise is somewhat accentuated by my situation: during the course of my journey, begun with bare feet on stone, it has been natural to embrace a more intimate connection with this place and to shed my clothes as I went. I am now stark naked, with nothing at all between my soft vulnerability and the hard angularity of the rock in the late afternoon sun. My clothes lie abandoned somewhere far down the kloof.

Normally when one is confronted, stark naked, by a group of strangers staring up at one, one instinctively attempts to cover up. However, I am just starting off on the exposed traverse across the face and so covering up is not an option. In the moment though, I seem to flow easily into a next option, which is to continue nonchalantly, as if traversing across a cliff face, twenty meters above the ground, completely starkers, is the most unremarkable and natural thing to be doing. A few of them wave. I wave back, being careful to use one hand to retain my purchase on the rock. They watch me for a while and then they continue their way up the kloof, and as the echo of their voices recedes, the kloof returns to silence.

When I think about the incident afterwards, I realize that what we think of as instinctual - the need to cover up, in this case - is actually no such thing. It is socialised behaviour. Both of these things, walking naked and climbing, are for me the most natural things to be doing. And it is a place such as this, a natural refuge beyond the concerns of socialised behaviour, that allows me to pursue them as such.

I am often the last to leave a camp site. It is partly that I am a slow packer but it is also that I like to depart consciously and slowly, to witness the transition in the place from human noise and activity back to the stillness of the natural world. On this occasion Sebastian waits with me. He wants to return with me, by boulder hopping down the stream, instead of taking the path along the side of the kloof that the others have taken. I have always enjoyed boulder hopping. For me it comes naturally and I am good at it. I am pleased that my son likes it, wants to do it with me, and is good at it too.

As we go, we talk about the intricacies of boulder hopping. He cannot make all the jumps that I do, and so must sometimes choose a different route to me. He cannot yet keep up with me, but I know one day that this will reverse. A little way down stream we come upon a pool that seems to exist almost entirely as an invitation to jump into it.

The water is almost without substance in its clarity. In a sense it is the visual colour equivalent of those very best moments in time that have been stripped to their purity of everything that proceeds and follows them, existing beyond time, beyond colour, so that in a sense nothing is left. Nothing and everything.

I stand one side to take photographs. Sebastian jumps. For a brief moment he is suspended above the brightly sparkling surface of the water, and the next he disappears below it in a boiling explosion of bubbles and light. When his head breaks the surface, he raises his arms high and he whoops. And that single exuberant whoop is a perfect expression of everything that I would like to say about the love and adventure and joy of being alive.

Things that go growl in the night

2012-02-29T23:43:00.000+02:00

Yellowwood Amphitheatre in the Du Toits Kloof Mountains is a truly captivating, wild and African place. The bivvy spot against its base is a compelling place to sleep. From my bed, the bright stars beyond are entirely framed by a fish bowl of dark rock, that includes the wall, its ridge-lines and the peaks across the valley. The wall, arching hundreds of meters overhead, dominates, both vision and mind. One can fall asleep in this splendid spot with a gratifying mixture of excited anticipation and peace.

Having worked the hardest parts of the upper wall the day before, we are looking forward to a good night's rest, before our attempt at a continual free ascent of our new route the next day. But unfortunately our rest does not last the night.

Around 1 am Rob wakes me. "Listen", he says. It is a beautifully, still and windless night. The high squeaking of bats traversing the wall above, is all that breaks the silence. Until it grunts again. The grunt reverberates around the amphitheatre, so much deeper and louder than I would have imagined. "It sounds big", Rob says. But what is much more alarming than the depth and volume of its growling grunt, is that each series of grunts is coming closer, heading straight and steadily along the base of the amphitheatre directly towards us. This is despite the deliberate noise that we are now making and our torch beams, somewhat ineffectively, probing the dark.

In a situation like this one's rational self could perhaps draw comfort from the theoretically low probability of being chomped by a Cape leopard. If it were to happen in the next few minutes, which my non-rational self is experiencing as a distinct possibility, I would be the first such victim, ever. But unfortunately it is not the rational self that responds most urgently to a fast approaching growl reverberating loudly from the cliffs all around one. Especially in the dark, where rationality has always been much less persuasive. Remember the monsters under the bed as a child? Well picture this: the monsters are growling, very audibly and distinctly. They are without doubt heading out from under the bed straight towards you. And there is no light switch.

A colony of dassies give panicked, high-pitched expression to their terror. Their squeals obliterate all remnants of night time calm. I am considering doing the same. But to Rob, whose rational self seems to be clawing its way to a position of superiority, there is only one course of urgent action required and that is to prove that we are not intimidated. I stumble behind him through the dark tangle of yellowwood trees, half asleep, half terrified of our imminent meeting, wondering how well I will carry off the bluff of non-intimidation. With 40 meters between us the leopard stops in its tracks, its eyes bright in our torch beams. We eye-ball each other. Rob must be bluffing better than me, because it turns and disappears down the slope below. We stand on the edge watching its eyes and listening to the continued, deep sound of its grunts from below. Hearts pounding with a mixture of thrill and fear, we return to our beds where tiredness gets the better of fear, but not for long. At 3 am we are awakened from fitful sleep to play the same game over again.

When our alarms sound too soon afterwards, we are still intact and alive. But it is with far too little sleep that we start up pitch one, at first light. Its harder than I remember it, but its also nicer...

To read the full account of our climb, my love affair with this place, and what happens the next night, see the upcoming June issue of SA Mountain magazine.

Sorry we're late, teacher, but the dog ...

2011-08-24T22:11:00.000+02:00

This morning, I suppose, was a fairly ordinary morning in the life of a parent, filled as it was with the usual ups and downs, and a little magic. Sebastian had been left at home once, so far. The squabbling over whose turn it was for the front seat, which had already delayed teeth brushing and final departures, was not yet resolved by the time I was trying to get Mila and Karl strapped into the car. That elusive even-keeledness with which we, as parents, aspire to ride the choppy seas of our children's emotions, was by now being buffeted amongst fierce white horses, far from shore. "Right", I shouted at Sebastian, "If you are not happy with where you need to sit, then you can get out and stay here."

Sebastian always rises to these challenges, with a certain passive aggression. "OK", he said with a sulky and unspoken, "I'll show you." And so off we sped, accelerating rapidly down the tar road and out of his sight. By then I was driving on pure reactivity, and found, I have to admit, some satisfaction in thinking how this ought to teach him. It is heart warming, though, how one sibling always sticks up for the other, if they feel that unfair treatment is being meted out. Phoebe breathed a loud sigh of relief when I finally conceded and turned around.

I find Sebastian sitting with Zed on the stoep. In this short time, he seems to have perfected Zed's forlorn, you've-left-me-at-home-again expression. "Now jump in", I say cheerfully, trying to diffuse the situation. But by the time we stop down the road, now very late, to load in Olivia, he is threatening to jump out again. We have forgotten that today is teacher Lindy's birthday. Mila has decorated a glass jar as a gift. Sebastian has nothing. He is distraught. I am irritated.

Eventually I am able to connect, beyond my irritation, to his disappointment, and I think, "Why not take up his suggestion, to stop and buy flowers. We are late already, anyway." I feel hassled buying flowers in a shop where I would not normally buy flowers. I am conscious of price. Sebastian likes these - the most expensive. I worry, as I always do, about our world's relationship between price and value. I dither. "How about these ones?" But his only criteria is the beauty of the gift. It must be worthy of teacher.

Sebastian is happy now, cradling with great care, a beautiful bunch of pastel, orange-pink, unopened tulips in the back seat. "Hey", he says, with no concern about price, "I can pay for these with my own pocket money." I am proud and humbled by his generosity, and perhaps he offers me a glimpse of another way to view my discomfort around our world's perception of value and price.

Further down the road there is chaos in the early morning traffic. An old man stands in his dressing gown and slippers on the pavement. His uneven, stubbly beard is pure white. He looks lost, out of place here in front of an old, simple, wire gate and unfashionable, low brick wall, flanked on each side by houses that were once like his, but that have since been demolished and re-built. Clean, modern aesthetics of glass and cladded stone. High, efficient security walls. He holds out a bowl of dog food, tilted forward pathetically and helplessly. In front of him, two dogs weave wildly through the traffic with uncontrolled exuberance at their freedom. Cars screech to a halt. Traffic begins to back up at the 4-way intersection.

Instinctively I pull over and get out. Perhaps I picture my father, if he could walk, getting into just such a situation, swearing helplessly while the dogs and life, enthralled in their mad dash forwards, ignore him. But when I reach him, the old man is surprisingly unperturbed. In fact he chats convivially, telling me how the brown dog bit his friend the other day. "But of course it wasn't the dog's fault. I had her spayed", he tells me, "but it hasn't helped."

I now notice that the brown dog, clearly the main instigator of the two, is frothing at the mouth and dashing at pedestrians, barking threateningly. The early morning pedestrian traffic, of domestics and gardeners, through this upmarket neighbourhood, is also beginning to back up at the intersection. There is general reluctance to pass through any part of the zone circumscribed by the dog's mad dashes. I am no longer so convinced of the dog's blamelessness in the friend biting incident. It has no collar. When I try to approach it, it directs its bared teeth at my legs, and then makes a similarly mad, excited dash at Sebastian, who has come to help me. The other children peer anxiously from the car windows. Phoebe clings to the flowers.

The old man continues to wave the food bowl in lame offering, while telling me a story about a previous dog he had. I can't really understand the relevance of this story right now, but then in the chaos I don't quite catch it all. I begin to think that perhaps I cannot be of much assistance here. He is extremely grateful, though, for our support and my offer of good luck as we depart. Quite cheerfully, he says that he thinks he might need it.

Back on the road, the children notice the time on the car's clock. "We are going to be very late", they observe. And then after they have thought about it a bit they add, "But that's OK, because we bought flowers for teacher and we helped an old man." I am impressed how easily they value kindness over the often seemingly more urgent of life's priorities, in which we adults tend to get caught up.

Now that the window is closed because Sebastian is happy and no longer wants to jump out, the car warms. "Hey, look!" he says after a while. "The flowers are opening!" And indeed they are. Slowly, cautiously, but purposely, before our eyes. "It's magic! It's magic!" the children whisper together, in hushed awe. And I have to agree. It is magic: this delicately offered gift of exquisite beauty in the depth of each flower's hidden centre.

There is a moment, late on each morning's journey to school, that we turn into the farm, and cruise down the hill towards the school and the sun, rising over receding rows of dark mountain ranges behind. Often the rising light combines and swirls upwards with the clouds, spectacularly. Sometimes it glints pure white, off the distant snow on the back of Du Toits Peak. This moment is always one of those sacred pauses, a pause that so valuably punctuates my day with the realization of what, exactly, life offers us.

The taxi man

2011-07-19T08:24:00.000+02:00

Phoebe interrupts her game to swing through the front door and announce that the taxi is here. It irritates Sandra slightly that he arrives so early. It makes her feel hurried. So I go out to tell the taxi man that she will only be ready in half an hour. “I'm early”, he says through the wound down window, as I approach. He is finishing a mouthful of lunch. And still has some red stains from it in the corners of his mouth - maybe tomato sauce. “I came early”, he says, “so that I could sit and look at the mountains for a bit.”

It is one of those gorgeous, bright winter days when the sombre bulbuls are singing clearly from the tree tops. The kids are swinging from the plane tree that stands, bare, in that corner of the garden. Its shielding summer green lies in dry, brown, wind-blown heaps below the trees on the other side of the road, that crinkle noisily when you run through them. They are constructing their own swing, next to Ernie's one. Mila is with them, beautiful Mila with her long legs. I am aware that to the taxi man, waiting across the fence in the gravel road, this must look like an idyllic scene.

Later when I carry Sandra's bags down he gets out of the car to take them. “I grew up in the country”, he says. “I am not from the city.” The two sentences stand in simple opposition. And there is a sense of longing in the gap between them, that makes me warm to the man. He seems to say them with a confidence, perhaps based on the scene around him, that I will understand. No further explanation needed. And so I chat to him about the small town, far away, in which he grew up, until it is time for Sandra to kiss us goodbye and leave for the airport, to fly half way across the world.

I am left that day wondering about this world that we create, the direction of powerful public forces that carry along individuals, strong enough to disconnect them from what they might love. So many people drawn into cities. When I go out later to chop wood for the fire so that the kids pyjamas can warm before they are out the bath, it is dark. The moon has not yet risen above the peaks. The frogs down in the vlei noisily fill the silence. And then I think briefly of the taxi man and I wonder what he is listening to tonight. I feel immensely fortunate to be where I am, on the stoep of our snug home, in the dark, listening to frogs.