A Time for Reflection

In the middle of a national hard lockdown, my housemate developed a serious case of cabin fever.

I’ll spare the details, but I was soon homeless. Everybody who would have taken me in was unwilling to because of the fear brought on by the pandemic. So being a Nature Guide I took to the hills( literally).

I walked, hitch-hiked, and paid my way for a spot on the back of a truck until I found myself alongside a clear watered river near a small hamlet known as The Jewel of the Overberg Mountains.

There was a lot that transpired in the week that it took me to find this idyllic spot, but the part I would like to focus on is my experience on the banks of the deserted Ravens Beach.

The first thing I did was build myself a shelter with leafy saplings. I hid my bag next, then dug a hole under a bush for a smokeless cooking fire.

As you might imagine it was a priority to remain undetected. The first night out there I cooked grits and a chicken stew over a small fire. The next night I grilled beef burger patties on a spade. The following night it was black lentils, and the night thereafter it was a corned-beef stew with rice.

In the mornings I bathed in the river. In the afternoons waterproofed my sleeping quarters with old canvas sheets and before sundown, I would have my cooking fire going again. There was nothing else to keep me busy but my thoughts and the view. Then one day, I inevitably ran out of supplies.

That forced me to take a walk to the nearest town. On that day a tempest like no other befell the Overberg Mountains. The rain came in sheets. I walked 16 kilometres in the most vicious of Cape Storms. The wind shredded my waterproof gear and left me wet, frustrated and questioning my decisions in life.

While I walked, the rain and wind came in squalls. I could see the clouds rolling over the mountains towards me, and the sheets of icy needles approaching swiftly. The trees bowed as the fronts advanced like an invisible army. There was nowhere to hide and nothing to do but walk and brave it. It took me all of the daylight to get to that town. I lost the feeling in my thumbs and I must have passed through at least 8 of these angry assaults.

During one of the lulls, I got to thinking; it’s pretty much like life and the challenges it throws at us. Sometimes there is no defence or refuge and nothing we can do. The only thing that keeps us going when it gets tough, is the fact that we keep going. As I finished that thought, I looked up. I saw what I think was the darkest cloud that day. This heavenly anomaly loomed over those mountains chasing away the light. At that moment I knew I was in for it. A funny thought crossed my mind at that point; Maybe today’s weather hardly represented life’s challenges. Here, at least I could see what terror was coming.