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March 15
Remember the smells of earth and sea, the sight of the sunrise and the song of birds every day?
Here, in a single mid-March morning, I have been privileged to experience what all people used to possess every day of their lives before towns took us over.
At the time of my birth the majority of Western Civilisation still lived on farms. And a generation before, at the start of the 20th century, as many as ninety percent of the population of the United States was involved in agriculture. Today, less than five percent of the GNP of the US comes from farming, if my memory serves (which signals that those statistics need to be checked).
In any event, I certainly remember when most people I knew watched each day of each season, rejoicing or worrying about the rain, the sun, the wind. Their livelihood depended on it. And they knew that their lives depended on a normal balance of nature.
In working with the elements they witnessed nearly every sunrise, and felt the joy and peace of nearly every sunset. They knew the natural rhythms of life.
Apart from hunger; the poverty of the 1930s Depression; deathly or crippling afflictions such as diptheria and polio; crude dentistry and gross surgery - we lived wonderfully well. Or I should say that we seemed to appreciated life more than we do in the 21st century.
But today I experienced it all. I looked at multibillion-dollar scenes that Turner and Monet could never capture. Constable might have gone mad at the colours, the light and the lines drawn by a sun slanting on the Hemel-en-Aarde valley. Monet could never match the evening colours of on the Klein River Lagoon which changed from blue to gold to silver and to soft, misty, dove-down grey as the sun sank into the sea. Moments earlier water and the sky, separated by a dark band of mountains falling into the ocean to the West, had exploded in a dazzle of red and gold. In the East, 'Moonlight Mountain' (Maanskynkop) caught the reflections and stood solidly in a rosy glow.
These are the moments which remind you of what the life-force in our little corner of the universe is all about. If only I could summon the resolution to rise before dawn each morning to watch its glories.
Here, in a single mid-March day, I have been privileged to experience what all people used to possess every day of their lives before towns took us over.
At the time of my birth the majority of Western Civilisation still lived on farms. And a generation before, at the start of the 20th century, as many as ninety percent of the population of the United States was involved in agriculture. Today, less than five percent of the GNP of the US comes from farming, if my memory serves (which signals that those statistics need to be checked) In any event, I certainly remember when most people I knew watched each day of each season, rejoicing or worrying about the rain, the sun, the wind. Their livelihood depended on the land, and they knew their lives depended on a normal balance of nature.
March 18
The Ides of March have come and gone. Autumn is here - though some days are hotter than summer - and the sun now rises in the east, next to 'Moonlight Mountain' (Maanskynkop) rather than the south-east behind Die Kelders. My cliff-walks recently have been devoted to the two tiny dogs, or to collecting plants for my fynbos garden. But today I found myself down the cliff, beside the almost-dry streamlet that drips onto the rock-ledge below the 'hidden garden':
The wild, gentle garden on the cliff is hidden from most eyes - even when one is standing in the very middle of it., I have always known that two people see different things when looking at the same object, but I had forgotten that the same person can see the same object quite differently at different times. When you are searching for plant species, you see little else. When you are looking at birds, you hardly see the wind on the ocean. When you are walking and thinking - or worse, walking and talking - you see very little of anything of the fabulously rich fynbos cliff-side.
It's sad, really, that so many of us miss so much, when all that is required is that we open our eyes and look.
Today I scrambled down a new, ultra-steep path along the cliff and purposely stared with ï?€ordinary eyesï?€ at the somewhat precariously perched 'hidden garden'. All I saw was a small break in the rocky coastline, where the cliffs fell back as they rounded an inlet, and instead of a sheer rock-face rising from the wave-ledge, there was a bush-covered slope. That was it. Hardly different to the fynbos on the cliff-top which to ï??ordinary eyesï?€ looks like flat, impenetrable bush growing in patches either a metre high, or two metres high.
Then I looked more carefully at the hidden garden, on this sunny, windy, autumn day. The March lilies were in bloom, just as they were on the cliff-top, except that the full morning sunlight allowed them to be deeper pink, with deeper blue outlining the whiter patterns on the petals. Some Felicia which had flowered fully in Spring was blooming again, just an occasional tiny star of blue with a tiny golden sun at its centre. The 'hairy' geraniums, with their curly, cupped leaves glistened in green everywhere, but only a few bore mauve blooms. Pretty little creepers, some silver-leafed, some green, created hanging gardens with their yellow flowers on the rocks. Succulents spread wherever there was space beyond the uncut patches of fine grass, or sturdy Buffalo 'lawns'. In the fynbos on the higher levels, I noticed animal tracks (dassies?) but also unexplained burrows and lairs. It was here I had watched in summer a heron stalking, and eating, a metre-long snake.
Here too was the streamlet, nestling between fine lawn and restios, still managing to flow in this driest season of the year, drippng over a ledge into a tiny pool that led to the saltwater catchments of the waves. This is where the wave-ledge stands semi-dry above the sea, fifty paces wide and stretching from the edge of the cove to the blow-hole where the cliff drops directly onto the ledge as it submerges under the water. The streamlet of the 'hidden garden' is at the broadest point of the dry ledge, in line with a marine-green rockpool, about the size of, and as regular and deep, as the swimming pool we had in our Johannesburg garden. But this pool is a mussel-throw away from the waves, which come pouring over to freshen the pool only at Spring-tide or when the waves are really big. [Later I learned that it was the family of Jane Beattie who created this peaceful, 'natural' rock-pool, using dynamite, probably.]
During the last few days the waves were really big, great rollers marching in from the south-west and smashing against the cliffs. At Siewerspunt, one of the most spectacular points, numbers of people came out to watch the big seas. I was there a long time, on the rocks, reading, when a seventh-wave flew up a chasm on my right and dumped its foam only a few feet from me. Moments later the same wave hit the cliff-face behind me, in the inlet on my left. There was a cannon-shot as a wall of white erupted from the sea far below, hung three or four storeys above me, and fell next to the cliff path. For a moment the spectators on the cliff were completely cut off from me and the sea, although of course, I was perfectly secure and dry on the promontory. I was momentarily and totally unsafe later when I stood on the edge of the cliff, still wearing my reading glasses. The distortion made me miss my footing, and I instinctively fell back, but went stumbling backwards over the rocks towards another chasm on the right. Most undignified.
Today the sea is tame, if not totally calm, soothed by an easterly breeze off the hills beyond Walker Bay. There is 'cob water' along the coast, lying in a green-grey fringe about half a kilometre wide from the cliffs to a distinct line of deep-blue sea. This green-grey is caused by an upwelling such as the better-known phenomenon on the West Coast, bringing food for fish and whales. I know there are fish out there today, for the gulls are sitting thick on the water, and the seals are busy hunting just outside my window. Another sure sign was the presence at Die Gang at dawn of the van which carries the logo 'Fishing Dream - all the equipment you need'. The owner was out there with his rod on the top rock.
I have discovered that our house is about half-way between the two traditional key fishing rocks of Hermanus. Kraal Rock on our right to the West, and Die Gang on our left to the East. Each is within 200 metres of our gate. Pity that neither Arlene or I fish.
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