It has been rather fortuitous that shortly after I began reading Dr Ian Player's biography, 'Into the River of Life', I was sent an email by a friend who runs World Challenge, asking if I would be interested in attending a Wilderness Leadership School weekend in the Pilanesberg National Park. I jumped at the opportunity.
The WLS is the brainchild of Dr Player and began in the Umfolozi Wildernesss as a means of reconnecting with nature and in doing so, rediscovering ourselves. The logo for the school features the three lobes of a Coral Tree, each lobe having a different meaning: man's connection with man, man's connection with himself, and man's connection with his environment. This is all just up my street, and the experience that I would have was hopefully going to foreshadow taking school trips through WLS in the future. We gathered with a number of equally enthused teachers from various schools around Johannesburg, and met up in the school's camp in an isolated park of the Pilanesberg Reserve. We set up our sleeping arrangements in the open underneath a sprawling tree that backed onto a hill of sorts. Spread in front of us was a rambling grassland and an open sandy area where we would create our fire circle. This area was crucial as you will see later... There are a number of guidelines that underpin the WLS philosophy. No technology at all, nor any alcohol or cigarettes. So the retreat is a clean one. Also, the only thing left behind would be footprints. Even the fire is made on a steel drip tray as not to bake the sand and when we would l;eave, we would sweep away our footprints from the campsite. There would be little trace of our presence. At night, without fences, we would have a few hour reflection as we completed our sentry duty around the fire blinking our torch into the bush as we kept watch, alone with the stars and our thoughts. It sounded like absolute bliss. During the course of that first afternoon, we gathered around the campfire and swapped stories of our varied responsibilities at school, our adventurous experiences and our aspirations. There is a comfort that resonates within the bushveld darkness and as we revealed glimpses of ourselves whilst sitting on precarious rocks, the glow of the fire softly burning, we became inspired by each other. When the sentry duties started later on and each of us prepared to sleep, the sounds of a distant herd of zebra whooped at each other and some noisy discipline was dished out by the elephants on the other side of the hill. By torchlight, I illuminated the eyes of bushbabies that lept through the trees and a scrub hare came close to the fire to investigate our intrusion. While I was alone with my thoughts, I drank up the beautiful space which surrounded me, and reflected on my life, my future and my past. The next morning, I was up at sunrise and was soon shouldering a backpack which contained our lunch for later on in the day. We would spend all of our time on foot, walking the Pilanesberg with Pat and Ryan leading our group. It is incredible what life exists everywhere and how much of it is missed when travelling by car. Shortly after leaving we watched the disturbed zebras from the night before gallop through the bushes. We stopped to look at the blushing Natal Red Grass and iridescent insects that clung to their storks. We picked out tracks in the muddy wallows of a vlei and tried to guess at the movements of different animals where we were standing. Soon we came upon a rhino midden and the little ecosystem which had developed around the heap of dung was fascinating. Plants germinated from the fertile ground which attracted insects and a variety of small browsers and grazers. There would attract other animals and so the cycle of life would be enriched by this single animal. This is an area which I think we forget to communicate in discussions around conservation. Everyone knows the tragedy of the rhino poaching, but why the animals are important remains a mystery to most people. Seeing the integral space that these threatened animals occupy on the food chain first hand made their devastation that more tragic and that more real. Our walk took us to a small koppie where we had a break for tea and Ryan managed to disturb a brown hyena. I climbed to the rocky summit (which sounds more grandiose than it really is) and saw a car in the distance wind its way through the park. I thought about how much more big game they might see, but just how much they were missing out on all of the little things, and in particular the smells and textures and tactile nature of the whole environment. As we continued to move, the cloud cover provided a cool blanket which made the walking easy. We even had a brief drizzle which made the long grass stick to our thighs as we meandered through the bush. For lunch, we stopped at a rocky outcrop with a commanding view of the valley below. Hornbills flew their dipping path between the trees and a troop of baboons could be heard barking at us from another hill. We were placed on our own to soak up the surroundings a bit more. I found a flat rock shaded by a fig tree and made myself comfortable to be quenched by the view. A pair of cliff chats flitted between large boulders and a squirrel came close by to investigate my intrusion. He eventually played hide and seek with me, chancing a glance and then retreating back to a crevice in the rock. After what seemed like too short a time, we rejoined for lunch, sitting on our haunches and filling ourselves with fruit and sandwiches. Someone found a shard of broken pottery near where we ate, evidence that people before us had enjoyed the same views much, much earlier. We followed a giraffe on the way home, its long neck peering from above the bush as it tracked our progress. We walked in silence and it was clear that a gentle peacefulness had come over the group. Despite being in the environment for just over a day, it had us bewitched and proved that such an experience is good for the soul. The remainder of the weekend was a bit of a blur as I thought back on that one meaningful day of walking through the bush. I thought about the quiet, the stillness and feeling like I was part of this ecology too. It is something that I will hold very dear to me and a program that I feel should be passed on to others. The only way that we will be able to preserve the wild spaces like the one in the Pilanesberg, is to allow peole not to take ownership of it, but rather to feel a part of it. The wilderness is not something that we can have, but rather something that has us. As Dr Ian McCallum says, it is a pattern of soul where every tree, bird and beast is a soul maker.
1 Comment
Before I begin my story you probably need some background. I run the environmental program at school and one of our initiatives is nurturing young animals which we then release back onto our campus. The school is located on a large property close to Sandton complete with grasslands, two dams and lots of indigenous trees. It is an ideal habitat for wild animals. The newest creatures to our wildlife centre are thus two recently weaned large-spotted genets.
These cats are beautifully marked and used to be found on our campus. They look like a cross between a mongoose and a domestic cat. They live in trees and are most active at night, when they hunt for insects, rodents and small birds. We would be looking after these two until they had grown up a bit when we would release them and supplement their feeding while they learnt to hunt. In the interim, we called the female Bella and the male Bilbo (which in retrospect was an unfortunate name for the little guy as the teenaged boys that I teach soon changed Bilbo to something a little more inappropriate) So from here to my story... I was chased down by a breathless student shortly after assembly who said that one of the genets had escaped and was cowering in a drainpipe. This happened during a tutor lesson, which enabled me to get away to the genet for a bit. I checked the enclosure to see if both genets had escaped, and was happy to see one face peering at me from inside. So, satisfied that I was looking for only one genet, I was led to the drain pipe where I was met by a very frightened little Bella, hissing at anyone who walked past her. Coaxing her to me with a dead chick achieved nothing, and so we resorted to putting a stick through the other side of the pipe in the hopes that she would run out of the open end be enveloped in a borrowed school blazer so that she could be taken back to the enclosure. This went mostly according to plan, and after dashing through the blazer and past me, I managed to catch Bella again. Amidst much hissing, growling and gnashing teeth, I held the wringing bundle as best as I could and then it was back into her enclosure. Job done... But while I was watching her settle in, I found it strange that the Bilbo hadn't made any attempt to meet her, and upon further investigation discovered that he had escaped whilst I was catching Bella. It took the best part of an hour to find him, by which time he had climbed to the top of the tallest tree near the enclosure. I now had a dilemma. So, I called the Johannesburg Wildlife Vet to ask for some advice. They said that because the genets were so young, and having been raised in captivity, the likelihood of them learning to hunt on their own at this young age was remote. Could I try and catch him. By this time, a substantial crowd of schoolboys had gathered. Climbing the tree was going to be a problem because the first fork which I could climb was some three meters up. One of the boys said he would organise a ladder for me...no problem. And this made me turn cold. At this juncture I must digress, because my recent track record with ladders has been less that ideal. Three months earlier a ladder had slipped out from underneath my whilst I was on top of our hangar roof at the airfield. The result was a broken elbow and three broken ribs. But crowds inspire confidence, and although I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, when the ladder arrived I made my way up until I reached the branch in the tree. I transitioned from ladder to tree (in a suit sans jacket I might add) and climbed upwards. Leather work shoes are not made for climbing trees. Despite these setbacks I managed to move perilously upwards, and looking down at the swelling crowd, I realised that the last time I was this high up a tree I was probably in primary school. Not a good thing. By some miracle of luck Bilbo had not moved, and I suppose he was seeing the humour of what was unfolding beneath him. The reality was that he was a scared little cat up a tree. When I got close enough to him, I was balancing on some branches that I was sure were straining under my weight. He moved to the edge of a thin finger of a branch, just out of reach. Calling and enticing with food got me nowhere. My next option was to shake the tree in the hopes that he would find some more secure footing closer to me and which point I would grab him. I felt awful doing this, and from the ground I am sure I looked like one of those cartoon characters shaking a cat out of a tree whilst the cartoon feline grips stubbornly on extended front claws, shouting in protest as it is jostled up and down with the movement of s branch. After some time, he did decide on the safer option in coming closer to me, and I managed to reach up with my left hand (the right gripping tightly to another branch in the hope of preventing a fall) and grabbed Bilbo just in front of his hips. The next parts I realised at the time I had not thought through. Bilbo turned around and sank his small teeth into the fingers of my left hand, hissing and growling. I managed to get him free of the branch at which point he decided to try and deter my efforts by sending a jet of urine over my crisp white shirt. It smelt as unappetizing as any cat urine, and I was soaked. So, gagging and bleeding, I now came to the conclusion that I would have to descend one handed, without falling, whilst my face turned bright green at the stench, and trying to avoid the hissing biting genet. I could not move my left hand to a safer spot behind Bilbo's neck where I wouldn't get bitten because this would require the use of both hands, a maneuver that would certainly result in a fall. Somehow I managed to reverse down the tree and onto the ladder, unsuccessfully avoiding the genets bites. When I had some sure footing on the ladder I managed to make my way onto a less perilous hold to the back of Bilbo's neck. My left hand was a bloody mess from the many tiny scratches his small teeth had inflicted. The boys parted way for the disheveled, reeking, bloody teacher carrying a furious genet, and I managed to return Bilbo to Bella, his companion in the cage. Some disinfectant, a borrowed shirts (and a well-earned shower two periods later) and I felt back to normal. We found the holes from which the genets had got out, closed them up and hopefully this great escape will be the first and last time. Just another day as a teacher... |
ContentSome thoughts about things, sometimes philosophical, sometimes just musings. The world through my eyes... Archives
March 2023
Categories
All
|