The wind a gentle descend through plantation tops mopping up streaks of sun to a cabin by a waterfall. The irresistible lure beneath a giant holly like banked miniature toffee apples. Skidding pebbles bestow crabs with momentary halos. The mad one chills himself without invitation. Damp wood and the how-one-should stack and start a fire and have tongues sizzle. Friendship: coffee and rusks. An immediacy of cold showers. Or a latter lathering in rock pools.
The next morning wide eyed moths tap dance across the windows. A bridge initiates a trail through a bearded forest. We leap like moss beyond barbed vines. Beyond water and stone’s ancient rhyme. Beyond any sure footfall to the most unfathomable order of all we climb. A spider orbits on dew-laden silk. Forest bush willows blush pink pregnancies. And then, the sudden animosity over the Canon ... Curiosity inevitably falls behind, plods onward without a map, snaphappy though. Three tree ferns pay homage to a stream. Dead-leaf mimics page over the heath. Exactly where bush pigs rooted out some grub earlier a solitary millipede slowly unfolds into this day.
Tittle-tattles tensioning about a smug fire. We absorb and drown collectively. A battle of snores lodged in soapstone follows. At dawn each of us pose for one of those I-am-here profile pics.
Ladybugs clustered on stilts mushroom through disorderly stacked needles. Numbered trees from numbered kloofs end up cut to size woodpiles for designated depots and sawmills. By the tallest planted eucalyptus in the southern hemisphere each in turn thrash out the entire bios over a midday snack. Silent status update: Yeah right!
Pockets abuzz with the aerial acrobatics of clivia, pearls flung from their spent beauty. Strangling figs tear down yellowwoods. Logs hover like galactic carriers on the edge of finality. A sunlit moment exposes fungi’s stealthy perpetuation. Some feathers of a Knysna lourie become a treasured find in the mad one’s hat. Wild gardenia fruit scattered along the path, a boisterous retreat up ahead and finally peering through tree leaves, samango monkeys figure like aloes on our fringe.
Dam side where pines drift like Ophelias a bloated toad blackens. Another cabin by another waterfall. Illegitimate picnicker’s abandoned braaipack welcomes us. Time to nurse the first blisters whilst the wife reunites with her camera over a resident chameleon.
Misty start to the last leg of the hike. The odd faint drizzle. Bare pin oaks warm their feet beneath a quilt of brown paper dolls as a startled buck bolts out of range. Watsonias in full bloom adorn rock faces where water trickle to mass and plunge to the great below. One last swim and a virgin hiker geared in K-way from head to toe inquiring as to the route’s severity from a simpleton.
Adriaan