Filling up

There are places we need to return to every so often. It’s as if the storerooms inside of us where we store the energy of these places slowly get depleted, and then, on a good day, you know: I need to get to the mountains, the sea, the green of a forest, the wide open spaces of a desert. I need to stand under the full moon, or the dark sky with no other light in sight but the stars.

     I’m quite sure that this need is different for everybody. For me personally, it’s mountains I hunger for, preferably decked in indigenous  rain forest with waterfalls and huge trees to feel small against. And to be by the sea.

     With the memories of our visit to Prague still fresh, it felt almost unduly indulgent to pack for yet another glorious vacation. This time to spend a week at San Lameer, on the South coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Again, as in the case with Prague, this was not something we had planned or saved up for; I had won a week’s accommodation at San Lameer with my entry to a menu planning competition.

     As I’m writing this explanation I ask myself why I feel the need to  apologize for having so much good fortune? Why do we often feel guilty when it seems we are more privileged than others? This is a line of thought I will save up to go into later, but for some reason I have to state that I find all of this quite unnerving. Since we’ve consciously embarked on this journey of trying to live out what we believe to be a mystical spirituality, it has been a valley high, mountain deep kind of experience that left us mostly in the dark as to what lies around the next corner. 

     What I do see more and more clearly is that God doesn’t really operate in proportion to the amount of money we have available. It seems that if there is an experience to be had, a way will be found to allow it to transpire.It makes me think of Moses using his inability to talk well as an excuse not to go lead the Isrealites out of Egypt. God alreay had his brother Aaron underway!

     So, with our available funds thinly spread to cover travelling costs and food, we set off, taking our elderly fathers along for a “free” week at the coast.

     I knew my “sea” storeroom had been completely empty only when my feet first touched onto the beach. Powdery soft sand embraced my feet and the roll of the waves, the sky, the light breeze welcomed me as if I had been sorely missed.

     We spent the week swimming in the clear, almost tepid water and lying in the sun, taking long walks  and making short trips to the nearby Oribi Gorge and a coffee plantation. In the evenings we sat listening to the sea rolling just beyond the dune forest in front of our villa. We tried to identify the bird sounds we heard.

     It was a week of being warmly and lovingly held, feeling utterly safe. Even though, at Oribi Gorge we experienced dizzying heights where just the slightest slip of a foot could lead to certain death, and the same waves we dove through and rode on, had the power to smash you to pieces against the rocks if you dared drop your guard.

     A highlight was, when, on one of our walks at sunset, we encountered a pair of bushbuck. The dainty little ram and ewe were grazing just a couple of metres from where we were following the road. We all stood observing one another for a long time. To be so close as to be able to see the ram’s nostrils move as he stood summing us up with his faculties of smell and sight and wild intuition, felt like a huge privilege. We were on holy ground.

It was only later that we read up on these little warrior buck, whom hunters fear because of their tendency to hide in the bushes when wounded, and then charge out and impale the hunter with their extremely sharp horns, when he draws close.   

     As I’m contemplating the week the contrasts that exist in everything stand out to me. The enjoyment and the danger, the light and dark side to everything. The immensity of the ocean and the mountains and the potential to be found in a tiny coffee bean. In myself I was battling emotions stemming from my childhood even while sincerely wanting to give my father this gift of a holiday.

     In all of this I didn’t feel confused. I didn’t’ experience anything as being either good or bad. It felt like life, and maybe because we could take it at such a slow pace, I was made aware of the complexities on a more conscious level.

     This time round, I not only got filled up by being by the sea; I got filled in.

Matilda