In Touch

Photo by George Angus

The toad beneath the harrow knows

exactly where each tooth point goes;
The butterfly upon the road
preaches contentment to that toad.

                                                           Rudyard Kipling

I am not exaggerating when I say that every morning, when I mount my bicycle and turn onto the main dirt road that passes our house, I think of Kipling’s poem.

Traveling by car you rush past landmarks and speed over bumps and stones. But with cycling it’s a different story. Very early in the morning, with the sun just above the horizon, some of the bigger stones in the road even cast shadows. 

The section next to the camp of the cows with their calves is particularly rough. The slope leading down to the dams where Sebastien does bass fishing has about a 100 metres of hard, smooth surface where my tyres sing. After that I have to sacrifice the full advantage of the decline by applying the brakes, steering through the numerous small outcrops in the road. This pattern is almost duplicated once I reach the highest point of my route and start coasting downhill towards the edge of the escarpment.

Photo by George Angus

The edge of the escarpment with the rest of Kwazulu-Natal
in the background down below.
I have never gone beyond this point with my bicycle, 
because once down you have to come up again!

On the way back it is mostly uphill. Then you truly feel every single section of corrugation. Where there is a sharp bend in the road the outside of the bend tends to be higher than the inside and when it rains the water washes small furrows along the whole stretch of that elbow. With a car these little erosion lines that resemble the numerous wrinkles in the lips of a long-time smoker are nothing more than irritating. For a cyclist, at the end of a long incline, they feel more like valleys of death following each other in rapid succession.

Photo by George Angus

Hoof marks.
Up to now I couldn’t figure out
what made  the repetitive lines.

Kipling didn’t have cycling in mind when he was writing his poem. His focus was more on class struggles with people on the lower rungs of the social ladder being acutely aware of every challenge and the personal impact every crisis has. Those in positions of power and comfort live unaware of that and often preach contentment to the others.

For reasons of my own I have Kipling in mind every morning that I cycle. Stones become reality, familiar obstacles are anticipated. But slowly, over the course of weeks meditating and thinking while pedalling, my gaze lifts from the road right in front of me and the people of Kipling’s poem come more into focus. 

In more ways than one cycling acts as an antidote to a lifestyle that’s once removed.

George