Silent spheres

My last night in the Cederberg Wilderness. The stars are brilliant on a black moonless sky. The Milky Way is directly overhead, a faint wash of white. The stillness outside seems complete. I can’t detect any sound. No birds or insects or animals. No wind or rustling tree branches. No moving water. No human voices or machines. The only sound I can find is a buzz in my own head, like the hum of a machine that is rarely noticed.

I went for a walk today from the lodge—another flat tire yesterday meant no driving today as I couldn’t risk the latest undersized spare on the dirt roads of Cederberg–and encountered a similar silence mid-day. The lack of noise is both calming and slightly eerie. This is a semi-arid region of brush and tiny flowers. Rooibos, of Rooibos tea fame, grows here. The destination for my hike was a rock formation that resembled an elephant. Rock elephants do not make trumpeting calls.

Tonight, a couple from Cape Town and I were guided up Leopard’s Rock, which sits prominently just below my cabin here at Gecko Creek Wilderness Lodge. We saw some San paintings under a rock overhanging. The paintings were made 7,000 to 20,000 years ago with the blood of animals. We saw the blackened wall where the San lit their fire. I thought about their lives here, on this spot on the planet. They were a nomadic people. I am in a nomadic phase. Will I ever return to this rock?

After seeing the paintings, the four of us climbed to the top of the rock outcropping, a climb that was more adventurous than a lodge in the USA would have allowed. At the top, we asked Ferai, our guide, questions about the San people and his own life.  Ferai brought a drum and we drummed the sun down over the mountains.

Gecko Creek has a braai area that seems designed like a temple. Most of the South African couples and families headed there to cook their dinner. Braai is not the South Africa word for Bar-B-Q. For South Africans—and maybe this is white Africaan’s South Africans—the braai is an important aspect of their culture. Each home I’ve visited has a place to braai outside. Not a portable grill, but a permanent structure. They prefer to braai with wood, though charcoal is acceptable. An Africaans man here scoffed when I said that most of the grilling I do in California is on a gas grill.

Growing up, my family had steak two to three nights a week and it was always grilled outside. For five years, from eighth grade till I left for college, I stood over the Weber grill in all seasons. In short, I have a lot of experience cooking meat over a flame, but I felt like a child last night being shown the proper way to braai by an Africaans man.  ‘Here’s how to light the coals.’ ‘You should start to heat the grill now.’ ‘You need to let the coals burn a little longer before starting to cook the meat.’ He was aghast that I was cooking both last night’s dinner and the chicken for tonight’s salad, rather than having another braai tonight.

He started his coals before me, but I was finished eating my meal before he and his wife started theirs. Efficiency is not part of the braai experience.

In addition to the cooking fires, tonight a social fire was lit in the middle of the braai area. Two married South African couples told touching stories about how they met. One of them was a love-at-first-sight tale where they half-jokingly said they should get married in their first conversation—and decided for real within days! The man is from Saint Helena, an island in the middle of the Atlantic that is a five-day boat ride from Cape Town. Their lives have changed because there is now a once-a-week plane from Jo’burg. The other involves an Africaans woman and an English-speaking man. The friends of the Africaans woman were shocked.

Sitting under the stars and around the fire, we talked, first about how they met, then about why Cape Town is better than Jo‘burg, then about crime and gun violence and Zuma and Trump and why Oscar Pretorius did it. Talking with these friendly strangers, the world’s problems seemed far away.

I leave South Africa a week from today and fly back to California in a little over a month. There is still a LOT between here and home, but the road ahead no longer seems endless. And so I linger a moment longer at the stars and listen for sounds I cannot hear.