Beyond the summit of the Winterberg

The sun was threatening to capitulate when I drove down the stately avenue of Eildon and nodded to the old stone church. I had spent much more time absorbing the stories of the Baviaans, and knew that I would have to hurry. The Oracle had told me to relax, however. Beyond the Winterberg there was a guest farm, and overnight should be no problem.

I squinted at the deepening amber of the surrounding skies and tried to measure how much daylight was left over. The sun sets late at these latitudes, but in this world of mountains one somehow feels disorientated. Phoning ahead was no option, because in these parts cell phones play  no part in communication. They will probably be growing mealies on mars before these old valleys ever get reception.

The road seems in deceptively good condition before you reach the foothills of the Winterberg.

Driving past the last remaining farms before burrowing into the Winterberg’s crumpled petticoat folds, one might think that one was in a Scotland where it doesn’t rain. The original farm names had all been changed by the British settlers. I drove past Craig Rennie, and began to think, “ag nee man, these roads are not so bad.” But at that very moment Winterberg began to snigger as I started to slip into first gear.

As the road became steeper, the road became rapidly worse, until after a while I started understanding the frowning looks upon people’s faces when they heard about my plans. I was beginning to worry that I had made a mistake. But it was by now most definitely too late to turn around. And so I crawled up the steep side of the stately mountain which dominated the mountain strongholds of the settlers.

Merino sheep stare with bland astonishment at an automobile that have found their mountain home.

I wrote in my diary later: “Drove back across mountains. Terrible road, but dry. Lovely countryside.”

“Rookseine op Winterberg,” the celebrated author, F.A.Venter wrote in his unforgettable books about the border years. Gelofteland, Offerland, Beloofde Land, Bedoelde Land. Literary treasures which, according to my knowledge, has been withheld from the world at large simply because they have never been translated into English.

That’s fine with me. I can be selfish too, and feel smug because at least my own eyes had read them as a youngster. No, I devoured them. They became part of me, because they described a world that really existed, and a people that my ancestors had been part of. The wars and fears and simple pleasures. They all originated in the land that I was driving through. These were books which nurtured patriotism. These were stories that made one appreciate what we have today, simply because they make us realize how high a price was paid for everything.

“Smoke signals on Winterberg.” That’s how the vagabonds communicated in the days when they made their sport by terrorising the pioneers who lived far from their own settlements towards the east. Smoke along these peaks often signalled imminent danger, and to this day it spells alarm to farmers, who know how quickly the eastern winds can drive its flames. Although the fields were greenish, the area has low rainfall, pasture burnt is slow to regrow. Fire is no friend along these parts.

At this point I have had to turn around twice before on previous expeditions when the road had been too soggy.

I did not pause near the summit of the Winterberg to drink in the view. I merely slowed down a little, an then plunged across into the seaward slopes that started losing altitude quite rapidly. It was then that I encountered a section of road that suffers from subterranean seepage. Here I had had to turn around twice in preceding years because the road had become churned into sucking mud so deep that I did not think a tractor would have made it through.

This time, however, it was still ugly, yet dry enough to enable me to pass. I was grateful, because I was now getting tired and hungry and I knew that I was bordering on becoming grumpy. I would have picked a fight with myself, but I knew I was too tired to talk back, so I just sulked and kept staring past two sets of white knuckles around the steering wheel, and trying to look past the bug splats on the windshield.

Hard baked in the recent drought, the road becomes a quagmire after rains.

Still, it was hard for one’s soul not to spread its wings in such enchanted country. I could tell that it must get freezing cold at this altitude. Even now the temperature had fallen and smoke was pouring from the chimneys of the precious few farmhouses that could occasionally be seen. Here people lived far from one another.

Small bridges cross charming streams.

I began to notice Dutch farm names again. Palmietfontein (Sedge fountain) and Zuurplaas (Sour farm). Then Kelso. Dutch and British, mixed together, the way it became in the frontier after 1820. The way it remains today.

Old abandoned homes reach out to passing strangers.

Here and there I noticed old abandoned houses. A few were ruins of crumbling stone. From some a melancholy whisper seemed to emanate.

“Save me!” I could imagine their hollow doorways crying.

“From what?” I could picture my reply.

“The greedy hands of time,” the would shout back at me.

To which I would answer back: “I can’t.”

“Why not?” the ruins sighed.

I shrugged and frowned.

“Because it’s none of my business. I’m just passing through.”

And then I could imagine them start to weep.

“That’s what I thought that you would say. That is what everyone who might have loved us always say…”

The junction where left and right lies equally far from nowhere.

After many miles of twisting through meandering vales and hills, the mountains finally spewed me into a valley where my day’s trail suddenly made a junction. It seemed strange to see a provincial road sign again. It seemed unreal to see the names upon it. To the right, Bedford and Adelaide. A very long and torturous journey across the mountain ridges, I knew from a previous exploration. To the left, Tarkastad.

Painted country towards the great north.

You get the impression that it was near. But if you did, you would be wrong. You’re still miles away from anywhere. You’re still in a world which tourist guide books have never heard of. The yuppies with their custom camping vehicles don’t really know about these parts. And that has preserved its graceful charm.

The old Voortrekker road used to run just left of the poplars.

Not certain which way the guest farm was, I ventured left and decided to hope for the best. If I was wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. Wrong turns are the keys that often unlock adventure’s door. It transpired that my choice had been right, however.

Poplars creating a graceful tunnel.

Even so, I was thinking I was wrong before I found that I was right. The road continued for longer than I imagined it would, and the shadows were already very dark when I finally passed a grand old stone house, and then chanced upon a discreet signboard which read: “Ashley and Joanne King. Braeside.” The Oracle had been right after all. www.braesidesafaris.co.za

A hard but beautiful country.

The only problem was that it soon appeared as if I was going to be disappointed. Driving through a charming avenue of wizened trees, I stopped before a farmhouse, hidden in a dense growth of poplar trees. The powdered dust drift past and settled where it could. The car looked as if it had survived a pyroclastic flow.

Running out of daylight fast.

I got out and cautiously knocked on what seemed to be a lifeless household. There was no reply. A slow walk around the house convinced me that there was nobody home. It was then I knew that I would be having a long night drive ahead of me to Tarkastad. I was tired enough to dread the last haul, but I was more worried about the very real possibility that I would find no accommodation in Tarkastad. If you’ve ever been there, you would know why. After Tarka, I didn’t think chanced would be much better either. Queenstown was a long way off, and by then I’m sure the countryside would be fast asleep.

The avenue to Braeside.

Still, there was no point in prolonging the inevitable, so I slid back into the cockpit and turned the car around. Just before leaving the farm track however, a farmer’s pickup came driving down towards me. When farmers come bearing down upon strangers on deserted roads, I always get a sense of foreboding. The feeling that there would be shotguns pointed, and a vision of snarling dogs smearing their muzzles against your window and leaving evil streaks of foam and sounds of scratching nails upon the paintwork.

Fortunately reality could have been no kinder. Out stepped Greg, who respectfully approached a stranger who must by now have been looking like an air crash survivor.

When he stretched out his hand, I suddenly recognized him. Not that I had ever seen him before, but I knew his kind. One of those good country lads which every mother hopes her daughter would bring home one day. We exchanged pleasantries, and I explained my plans. There was a problem, though. Greg’s family was on their way to the big city the next morning and the house was still a mess after a whole batch of hunters had finished theirs safari and cleared out that day.

However, if I was prepared to tolerate some disorder, he explained, they might be able to make a plan. “Tolerate disorder?” I mused. This was a corner of precolonial Africa. I would have been happy to share a warthog’s burrow and tolerate a thousand fleas. An unmade hunter’s lodge would be a luxury beyond comparison. I think my tired smile must have given him the answer.

And so we continued our conversation while he radioed for his mother, who soon showed up with a maid, who hastily began to set things in order. Greg told me he was a business student at Rhodes University. I asked him what he had in mind for a career. And then I saw his eyes light up. He eventually wanted to return to the farm, he said. And be a professional hunter like his dad.

I smiled again as I listened to his plans. I only realized it later on, the reason why I liked him. I think it was because I saw myself before me. I was 19-something or 20 again and full of dreams. I had plans for the future. I was too young to know what lay ahead, and it was for the better. “God made the world round,” Isak Dinesen said in Out of Africa, “so we would not see too far ahead.”

I asked him about his business studies, and I listened to his words. I heard my own words then. He was saying what I would have said in those days. Later I would think about their beautiful family farm. It is a harsh land that they live in. Generous, in certain ways, but generous at a price. I did not think he was made for business. He was a child who belonged to the mountains, like I was myself.

I had no place to tell him so, but I secretly hoped that he would find his way back to his mountain home again one day – and that the mountains would treat him well. You don’t speak about the wilderness with eyes that sparkle like his did if the wilderness did not own your heart completely. And I have grown old enough to know that one’s life is most complete when lives where one’s heart is. Don’t ever go too far from that places that hold your heart. If you do you may not die. But you will wither. And wither is not far from dying, if you know it for what it really is.

There had been no need at all to set things in order at the lodge, I felt, but I knew the way of country folk. Joanne and her maid fluttered around and did a series of domestic things, and apologized that nothing was the way they wanted. I just stood around and felt guilty for having caused so much drama.

You don’t know true luxury until you’ve tasted mountain air in desolate country, though. You don’t know peace until you’ve heard it’s silence. Around me the night held practically no sound at all except perhaps two crickets. Full moon was drawing near, but it had not yet risen, and the night was without shadow.

These were country folk such as those I had known where I grew up. Solid, kind and generous to strangers. Joanne retired to the neighbouring farm where they live, and returned an hour later with her husband Ashley, bringing home-baked venison pie, homemade soup, eggs, cereals, milk, and rusks for coffee. What more could one ever ask for? Life could not possibly be more complete. I would not have trade a night in the mountain for a banquet at the Ritz.

And so I had a seven bedroom house all to myself, a grand home-made supper better than the fare of royalty, and a long day full of memories to digest. I thought about how similar my own world had been once upon a time. The culture of country hospitality, big old houses that were very quiet on unusually dark nights, stars that shone so brightly that they almost hurt your eyes – and a sense that nothing that the future holds could possibly be reason to concern oneself. 

Wrapped in all this pleasant familiarity I dropped into a bed with luxurious linen, and kept on falling into the darkness, through the stars and into a dreamless sleep that knew no interruption until I awake to perfect silence.

The beginning of another day. I had planned to head on early, but the beauty of this graceful land had laid its hands on me. I always take my own coffee with me, for I had learned that the finest things in life – good whiskey, good company – and good coffee – cannot be counted on when one is journeying to unexpected places.

I made my breakfast in a kitchen that had the typical safari scent that I remembered. A scent of people and food, and a hint of smoke from a fireplace where great stories had been told. That’s where I had obtained much of my most valuable education. Beside a fireplace, in the company of my father and his safari friends who talked about conservation – and how harvesting life from the wilderness is always an integral part of its sustainability. Of character and sportsmanship, of culture, and business and politics and investments.

I had been a little mouse back in those days, but a mouse that had big ears. And now it all came back to me.

Instead of clearing out right then, I sauntered across the water furrow bridge, through the poplar forest and down to the river which lay green and mysteriously clear as jade. I lingered where the weeping willows dip their branches into the mirror surface, and remembered a story that my uncle told me of his youth near Frankfort in the Riemland. There were bird cries that made unexpected echoes in the darkness of the poplar grove. The blue sky smelled sweetly and I wondered what the cause was. I could not bring myself to leave. It was too charming.

The python-like coils of a wisteria, shedding the last blossoms of the season.

I had another coffee on the patio, sitting beneath a truly ancient wisteria which had coiled itself around the pillars like an incredibly thick python. In the dust, I saw a movement, and realized what it was. It was a hoopoe bird. My father had always considered them to be a sign that good fortunate was ahead. It stemmed from his safari years, when, on several occasions when he and his faithful friend Cal Tipton had been unusually lucky, it had begun with the sigh of a rare and elusive hoopoe bird.

The hoopoe bird which my father had always considered synonymous with imminent good fortune.

I tried to remember when the last time was that I had seen a hoopoe. Then it came to me. It was on the morning of my father’s funeral, almost exactly a year ago. When we turned into the church yard, there had been two hoopoes before our vehicle. I remember that my mother and I both smiled when we saw them. It probably didn’t mean anything, but the sight of them were comforting. I was glad to see one this time also. And it made me look forward to the gathering morning.

The patio at the guest lodge of Braeside where I wrote my journal entry.

I wrote what I was thinking in my journal while the purple flowers slowly rained onto my pages, onto the table, and into my hair. I just held one hand over my coffee and continued to record what I had seen the previous day. “I noticed,” I wrote, “that people still take their hats off when they greet you in these parts.” I’m sure nobody else even notices these small gestures, but that is how Greg and Ashley had greeted me the previous day.

Where I grew up we were taught the same protocol which now you seldom see. To doff your hat when meeting strangers or your elders. This always seemed to be such a refined aspect of culture and respect to me. When I grew up I began to notice something else, though. I began to notice something that I don’t think people specifically taught their children, but which society had nevertheless quietly adopted as a natural custom. I namely became aware that even when the old men greeted me, they would lift their hats to me.

Showing respect to one’s betters in this way seemed well-deserved and natural. But showing such respect to juniors was something far greater. It suggested to me that these were people who respected humankind to a degree that we don’t understand today. The greatness of great men, I do believe, can be measured by how they treat those who are less important than they are.

At this realization I lifted the nib of my fountain pen. Sometimes you run out of words when you want to write down what you’re thinking. Mostly because words are just inadequate. I screwed the cap back onto my old Pelikan with a smile. When it was made in Germany, about 60 years ago, I don’t think the makers ever would have thought that it would be writing in a place like this in Africa – so far from what others would consider to be reality.

I sat and drank in the surroundings while the blue wisteria blessed me steadily with its purple rain. I have been on many spontaneous journeys in my life before. My carefully-made plans had been often changed by unexpected circumstances. These events frequently brought me to moments such as this one. It is then that you pause to wonder: – are we merely stumbling along the roads of life? Or is there an unseen hand that guides our journeys, directs our footsteps, and upon more occasions that we tend to realize, purposefully turns us off the beaten track to linger where still waters lie?

And so we revel in pleasant solitude for longer than we thought we would, and drink thirstily from what we have been offered. After that we continue on again, but differently from before. Nothing slakes one’s thirst as totally, as when you’ve drunk from quiet waters.

Next instalment: Forgotten tragedy in a mountain valley, the plough of God, a soldier’s grave that had to be a secret – and the reason why antbears always like to burrow where coffins are buried.