Wild and sacred places - jane mcilleron

About this time last year I was lucky enough to be able to spend a few days in a private nature reserve in the Cederberg, and have been reminded of it now. 

Although it is still very cold (there was snow on the mountains in the vicinity when we arrived), spring is well underway in these arid parts of the Western Cape.

All sorts of improbable and exuberant flowers appear from stony ground, sand flats and thorny scrub. Plants with fat, flat, succulent leaves produce delicate shimmering blooms, like exotic butterflies settling for a few moments of rest en route to much lusher climes. Grey, almost leafless bushes are covered in pink and purple mists of incredibly intricate tiny flowers.

 The hairy grey green clumps of Arctotis daisies remind me of poppies in the way their buds are borne curled over on furry stems, to lift up and burst into haloes of orange flame. In the shelter of a rock on a hillside a mass of papery bells glow a strange blue-green tinged white.

 Whole slopes blaze in brilliant colour. I am enchanted.

Even greater is the impact made on me by the landscape. The vast space and distance, the indescribable light, the silence – it is like a healing, a benediction... - I can't find the right word.

It feels as if my soul has been washed, mended and smoothed out.

The landscape is made up of quite distinct communities of plants. It is a strange feeling; I would be walking through an area dominated by a distinct group of plants, then suddenly, without having noticed it happen, I would find myself in an entirely different collection of species. Some of the plants seemed almost sentient; as if,had I been equipped with the right language and sense for detecting it, I could have heard them exchanging strange and subtle intelligence This applied especially to a community of Euphorbias that looked like line drawings of sparse skeletal trees, reaching way above the low bushes and plants like an ethereal plan for a taller type of vegetation. I can't explain why I felt this way; I don't usually get that sort of feeling about plants, nor do I talk to them.

At night the cold clear air tastes like the delicious icy water in the stream. The stars are so thick and bright. The Milky Way is milky and the whole sky is punctured and peppered with stars, too many to comprehend, giving me the feeling of an abyss of perception or conception, a vastness of space unimaginable, and simultaneously a reminder of the insignificance of my puny self. I remember Stephen Watson's versions or translations from the /Xam, in which the narrator recalls the sound of the stars, saying “tsau, tsau”.

There are traces of the sensitive and dreamlike rock paintings done by these First People.

There are high areas with magnificent anarchic rock formations, remnants of a surely violent geological past, as well as more level sandy flat plains in the valleys, and rolling hilly areas covered in low scrub. There is quite a bit of wildlife – antelope, zebra, leopards and aardvark (we didn't see either of these two, only spoor) ostriches and some other birds.

After coming home the memory of Bakkrans clung like a fragment of music to the edges of my awareness.. Eventually I made some earrings that in some way came from the weird improbability and unlikeliness of the plants - the way a plant built as if to withstand a century of drought and hot scouring winds will produce a glowing delicate flower, or a bush that seems only to know about thorns will shroud itself in incredibly complex and tiny blossoms.

They are entirely inadequate as a response to the rare and extraordinary beauty of our semi arid landscapes such as the Cedarberg, the Karroo and the Richtersveld. Even my father's photos do not do it. I don't think there is any medium that can convey the experience. These places are unique and very vulnerable. It is unbearably sad to know how unlikely it is that they will last even for one more generation.

I think another of Stephen Watson's poems in his versions from the /Xam is appropriate; it expresses the grief of a man foreseeing the simultaneous destruction of a his people, their civilisaton and the magical, fragile land they inhabit.

Here is the last verse from

THE SONG OF THE BROKEN STRING

by Stephen Watson.

Because

of this string,

because of a people

breaking the string,

this earth, my place

is the place

of something -

a thing broken -

that does not

stop sounding,

breaking within me.

(from Dia!kwain)

Photographs: Geoff McIlleron.