We make connections through shared experiences. They are the synapses that snap as our eyes widen and the edges of our lips churn in the beginnings of a smile. It is something like a gentle push in a shift of perspective. A new vista explored. A view enjoyed.
It is the truth that we find when we look down from on top of a mountain. We took eager steps that squelched along the muddy path, winding ever upwards. Bella’s barrow strides were in awkward rhythm with my own but she managed to keep pace. We passed the small dam where I had caught a silver trout in the rain the day before and steepened our ascent at the foothills of the Northern Drakensberg. Soft, long grass and gnarled protea trees painted the landscape around us. Our destination, a palm of wrinkled rock looked wet in the sunlight. It seemed impossibly far away for my eight-year-old daughter, but she had a resolve in her eyes that was hardened by the promise of a milkshake if she got to the top. As we climbed, the path began to meander between boulders and stones. We clambered between some small crevasses, stopping occasionally for a mouthful of mountain water or to wonder at the view. A farm dog, Lucy, accompanied our hike often straying from our route to pounce on some-or-other animal unseen in the bushes. Her black and white coat gave Lucy away as she hid in the long grass, her punk tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. Step after step, Bella gained ground towards the top. She played eye-spy to distract her from her tiredness until what was a speck of rock near the summit became an arching fist protecting the cave beneath. We huddled in the shade, our breathing fast and sweat clinging to our hair. At the base of the sandstone were tiny ochre figures. Their slender bodies had been brushed hundreds of year before. Beneath the two cave-painting stick men were the yellow-brown pelts of leopards. This regal sighting must have been significant, at least important enough to be immortalized as art on rock. Bella’s traced their crisp lines, not touching but following. Some small connection between our past and present in the flow of her small finger. We moved along the wrinkle of the cave towards a pool of sweet mountain water that had collected from a falling spring in the rocks above. Almost-powder droplets cascaded from some unknown point above us. We laughed as we tried to fill our water bottles from the falling streams. The rhythm of trickling water echoed around us. Pure, live-giving fluid. I turned my back on the cave and saw the valley stretch out beneath my toes. The lazy, languid rough of our path was like a brown thread leading back to The Cavern. The mountains seemed to encircle the lowland like an Amphitheatre. Green was everywhere. Behind me, Bella had huddled in a column of sunlight, her head bent up towards the tiny waterfall. She was smiling.
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ContentSome thoughts about things, sometimes philosophical, sometimes just musings. The world through my eyes... Archives
March 2023
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