The armchair rocked back and forth, the school books were spread across the table in a glorious mess. There was no inclination as to where she should begin. Rummaging through the pages of her books she kept an eye on her flash cards and the other on the clock. The day started thirty minutes past the expected hour, her coffee still cold from ignoring it. Sarah marveled at the strangeness of her schoolbooks, the notes in which she looked at seemed to be from some other form, another time. Her separation from her interests made her less aware of how she was to approach learning and this kept her at a distance of at least three life times removed. She felt basically alone, her new friend showed less interest in her work than in himself. He to was removed from a world of intuition which needs saving, or at least a drop of interest.

The day has a burst of light with subtle breezes of warmth. In the hills roamed a baby giraffe only twelve days old, a rumor was spread that there had been two new ones. He had only seen the one two days ago. A sixth the size of her father so delicate and fragile the little one stretched her head towards the tops of a sugarpod Acacia tree.

The house of his friends was something that he never thought could exist outside of the human imagination. The structure and placement of the house restored his faith and hope for human creation. The whole house was thatched; the theme of the African bush was perfect for it was in the middle of the bush. When driving down the rocky hillside to reach the garage one could not even see where the house resided. Covered with thickly planted mountain Karees, multiple species of Acacias, and a dense grove of vines that hung from the properties gates the house seemed to be swalloed by vegetation. Inside on the property was every child’s dream. Turkeys and geese clumsily walked across the road towards the small herd of cows that were being feed from the troughs, a calf stood shy behind his mother. Chickens clucked their way into refugee in fear of everything. We grabbed some melons and apples and made our way to feed the giant tortoises that had their own area next to the garage. Rex a shorthaired German pointer, Button a Jack Russell Terrier, and Napoleon a golden retriever met us. Their happiness was enough to cure me of any thoughts of unhappiness.

How much of history is accurate, how much created by those with power? These questions I don’t ask to often and the answers to the questions do not bother me, for yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery. To dwell on past memories has only brought me more unrest than thinking of a future in which a projection of happiness is perhaps possible or not. Then I rest or find refuge in an unapologetic world that has no anger. The physical reaction that makes our world grow is as perplexing as to how something’s do not grow. Whether it is to strive to better ones self or a seed that was never sown. Life could very well be a cycle and for me there is nothing more perfect than an ovule.

There was nothing that remained but a small baby giraffe
After a 2 meter fall her first breath filled her lungs with a winters cold
Her legs as fragile as the breeze that ushered her into the world
The tall grasses hid her from my eyes, only her family could hear
Her cries, the nights frozen by frost but warmed by thoughts of this baby giraffe

A sixth the size of her father, his eyes weep with happiness
Tear ducts that don’t exists make the baby girl wish for her fathers tears to stop
She stumbles and crawls towards the rivers bend past the Acacias fallen pods
Her delicate ears have a thick winters coat, her hide a faint and light colour
Camouflaged by the spear and Guiney grass.

With joy for our Earth to know that here and now lays this baby Giraffe, a sign for innocence in elegance, hidden in the thick bush of an unapologetic world.

There he lied to her face,
A farce of his charades
Her mother talked about him
A trickle of hate spurred her fate

In the bush the animals faced a rush
A pack of lions hushed
The zebra about to be pushed then crushed
The weight of hunger laid to rest
Everyday is another test
Finding a will to survive
Evolution helps them hide
Under the weight of hunger
Minding each others will to thrive

Wilderness covers my shoes, the scent is captured by my lungs
I kick myself to keep up with nature’s turns, wilderness swells inside my head
Bees don’t pollinate flowers that are dead, they float and fly following a scent that fills them with a fever that makes them high. Pollen is drug that makes my mother sneeze, for me it’s a path to success, fertilizing an egg that needs sunshine which I then turn to mead, earths tears sprout a little new guy for me to feed.

He pulls towards the sun away from the cold soil that feeds him life and sustains him. Growth is a struggle and as a plant there is no alternative but living. Being threatened by poisonous rains that over acidifies his stalks and leaves makes him weak and forces him to focus more energy in surviving than producing flowers for his friends the bees. When it’s not the rain that worries him he must pray that the grazing animals over look him, he watches as his brothers and sisters provide themselves as meals for the animals that urinate at his heels.

I say I am stuck in her daydreams, wasting seconds on this world. Stripped from her ribs cloned in an image of her love. Floating up gripping the pieces of my broken self, attaching them to my long lost limbs, closing my heart knowing that I am lying trying to live the better life. Straight down from the tunnel that I enter, smothering the embers that burn in to my blood, keeping the flames down not allowing the smoke to rise to burn my mind. The embers grow with the days that pass, my fuel is running low but I am in the forest of her eyes, logging my way through dense distance’s lighting everything in my path on fire just so I can see her burn for me.
The borders dividing our world mean nothing, each country is another part waiting their turn. I will make the mountains crumble and the sea’s rise. Drowning the world that denies a love through distance and determination will finally set itself aside to die. Logged to abandonment we drifted apart, finding myself not at home, because home is when I am with her.
The nape of her neck grows cold with out the presence of my burning blood. Her cruelty towards my words had put out the flames that I set a fire to. Her tears erased the damage of my passion, the forest in her eyes was known a barren land covered in soiled soot. Days had past and life begun to spring. A smile once buried by her frown now found laughter in the eyes of another enchanting man. She understood as the forest in her eyes began to grow that it was she now who was stuck in this new lovers day dreams wasting seconds on the world, escapes was futile, trapped in this new world she began to set him a blaze, the fire that I once burned for her had never died the coals simply had surrendered and kept warm under her glowing gaze. She keeps me warm in her thoughts. My blood does not boil for her but simmers on the low heat in the cauldron of her desires. The forest that I once loved and set on fire is not mine to watch grow, it was never mine to love. That’s why I set us on fire, never wanting to put us out.

He couldn’t grip the idea of a solitary life style for more than a year. The year that he found himself in just began and already he was scared, alone, and bored. Nature for him was an escape, an experiment. To be with himself he knew not how to deal with the conversations with himself. He was doing a good job, never letting any agreement or argument get the better of him. Nature in rhetoric is a fantasy that is never understood in whole, but perceived through previous experiences. For him going to Africa was an opportunity to be with animals that he had once forgot, to be part of a people and community that he enjoyed. His naivety behind his misunderstanding and cockiness made him feel apart from his own interpretations of friendship and love. He knew now that his decision to come here was a sacrifice but he did not know he was making this sacrifice. Sacrificing his personality in order to change through a controlled understanding of himself. Being able to not front anymore made him feel more whole than he had ever before, he understood that growing could mean action in daily exercises. The lack of motivation in the morning forced him to stay in slumber near the cold draft entering through the curtains.

Wanting to become part of a project that help tend to the needs of the land creating a junction in which he found himself needing to be helped also. His life until this point had been in a social setting, big cities with only pockets of corridors of nature. Never had he before experienced the beauty of living with more than 15 species of mammals and a unrecorded amount of avian species that migrate throughout these winter months. Daily his silence is followed by deep thoughts in a meditated state that only makes him more consciousness of his breathing. Through the week his loneliness drains his personality, a rift is turned into a void of happiness and contentment. He knows not how he can make it in a life as such as the one he has promised to live, he didn’t think that this experience was going to be about himself, but more of his work. The two cannot be separated from each other for now he knows that his work is himself and that without him much of this ecological project would not exist. The land that he has grown to love does not feel as alone, he understands that to feel a distinct division between the differences in the lifestyles he wants to live and the one he lives is selfish. That he too is part of the modern disease, living in his own head and not in the land in which makes his thoughts. He is trying hard to immerse himself into the “integrity {that} is wholeness, the greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe” by un-centering his mind from himself he will be able to be successful and find that each day is more part of him that he part of it. And he to will be “as the rock and ocean that we are made from.”

Quotations from Robinson Jeffers, Carmel Point

It is getting colder every day, I never thought that Africa especially Southern African countries could get cold enough that frost gathers on tall grasses and mountain trees.
Yesterday I got a call in the morning asking me to remove a python from behind the bar. The excitement was so much that I almost forgot to put on shoes, thinking that sandals would be just good enough to tackle a snake with. When I had arrived at the scene a group of fifteen workers stood idly laughing, gasping, and screaming as the snake coiled itself around an electric box.
The python was about 4 feet long and two n’ half inches thick, a young one that simply felt comfortably warm by wrapping his or her body around the white electrical box. I had found a dried out piece of bamboo, cut the branch of a silver clusterleaf tree so the end of it resembled a wish bone, I then stuck that piece in the hollow bamboo shoot and had made myself a snake catching staff. I knocked it off the box and pinned down the head between the v shaped branch. In its cunning way it avoided the stick the first a couple of times and continued to strick at me until I got it pinned once more. Stepping lightly over the back of its head I then started to twirl the stick near the mid section. The adolescent python coiled itself around the stick which made it easier for me to lift it up to place it in the pillow case I brought with me.
I have never had a fear of snakes but when I empty the contents of my pillow case I felt more uneasy then when I had captured it. I drove down to the dam thinking that the tall grass and water would provide the snake with a good habitat. I watched it slither away hoping that it would look back at me one last time.

Ibelo just wanted to share his victory over the three meter snake he killed by the spa. The excitement in his voluntary action was then paraded around the workers area. Seeing a 12 foot spitting black cobra with blood trickling down the sides of his body is no more enjoyable than seeing it slithering along the side of the spa window where he was once found. Snakes are terrifying. With more than 10 species that are abundant here on the reserve it can be often as every other day where people talk about a puff ader or water python that they saw slithering its way back maybe into hibernation. The weather across the global is playing tricks on every living organism. Mild winter days lure out the snakes making them hope for a change in body temp, before the nights frost glistens back over Kedar.
Animals are continuing to have little ones, the Waterbok have a couple of new borns hiding in the wetland pass the dam. The Kudu sit outside a fence where one of the females tends to her young and her own health. The oddness in the timing of the year for these new borns is unusual, spring isn’t arriving any time soon and these little ones must endure cold sometimes freezing nights.
Wild fires. Luckily control burns thwart the power and destruction of wild fires. During these winter months the land becomes dry and arid, fire can be started from a cigarette bud, a lightening bolt, or the most common; the all powerful sun. The fire does more healing than damage once its over, but missed used in control burning leads to many new and up coming tree shoots being burnt. Creating a progression of a mountain side that will never have the chance to grow into a resilience.
It is odd when you drive for an hour or two through the reserve and to the corners, in search of but to no sight of the five Giraffes. They can only sleep for 5 minutes at a time and can not keep their head down for more than that five. Their bodies are camouflaged well by the tall savanna grasses and thick Acacia trees. It has happened more than once and for about a period of 4 days I thought they went missing.
The south west corner of the reserve is charred and black from a control burn that we did a week ago. New green shoots are springing to life only to be feed on by the Blessbok and Zebra that roll around in the charcoaled aftermath of a blazed grassland.
How many if any snakes were burnt that day?

You could hear it over the mountains facing north, the gray clouds loomed just over the peaks. It was heading this way. The thunder grew louder and the rain became more intense. The first drops were subtly and light, a smell of wet peat, clay, and sand filled the reserve infront of me. Holy rays of light pierced the looming scattered odious clouds of resolve. Once rested, birds filled the air in an escape for a dry flight into drier lands. Hornbills fluttered in two, diving down to skim the tall grass and ascend back into a flow of dry wind that carry them into sunny grassy lands.

I got back into my bucky and followed the wet tire tracks down the side of dammed wetland. Waterbuk pronged to alert scared from the starting of my engine. There safety on the wetland island did not seem strong enough so they darted across the bank and made their way towards another. Four females and three young. The young as old as two weeks. The matriarch stood tall and faced me, gazed into my eyes hoping to find no hostility.

The land grows cold at night and at this time in the late afternoon a dense fog fills the tops of the wetlands. Cold gusts of wind enter through my windows and makes chicken of my skin. The rain started to delete the silence filling the air with a strong scent of wet grass.

The action of rain has control on the rest of the day, the clouds filter the sun as they pass through and make their way across the reserve. A faint yellow sunset glistens in each raindrop that rests on the leaves of Acacias and Aloes. The Marula tree releases a faint smell of sweetness, the bark ladened with moisture swelled.

Showers are periodical, the rain comes and goes, pours then sprinkles.

Yesterday morning I awoke to a strange noise, a noise that I have never heard before. At first I thought it was rain because of all the individual cracks and pops. I didn’t see any rain, or any body outside my window above my bed. I jumped out of the bed and ran upstairs to look out the window, the noise was louder but I still could not see the cause of the cracking and popping sound. I went back downstairs and peered out the window-facing west. To my amazement and fear I saw flames about seven feet tall stretching down the fence that divided the road and the reserve. I grabbed a bucket filled it with water and ran outside. I got to the fence and there I saw Stoffel and his team doing a control burn along the fence to burn the tall red autumn grass so it is easier to clean up the rubbish that people through out and to gain access to chop down the invasive trees that plague the land. The team laughed at me, still in a tank top and my pajama bottoms half covered is spilt water, with the look of shock and fear still plastered on my face with sleepy eyes. It took a moment to come to the realization that the fire was under control and I was not needed.
I got into the bucky and drove around the reserve in search for the biggest Eland, named George. I had to photograph him to send to a wildlife raiser who knows the ins and outs of game trading and breeding. There is an offer to swap George for another bull Eland in order to have a stronger genetic difference in our Eland family. Swapping is common and it helps make stronger gene pools for animals. Here at Kedar we are afraid that our bull Giraffe will begin to mate with his two daughters when they are ready, which could lead to many complications. There is a younger male but he is solitary and never to be found around the family of four. I found George unknowingly at the time because there are usually five to seven Eland that roam together all over the land. The tall grass can camouflage them well especially when they lay or keep their heads down to graze. I got out of the truck and started to approach the chewing Elands, the closer I got the slower they chewed. I stood my ground and called out George’s name hoping for a response. Before I knew it I was having a full conversation with the group of Elands asking for George and what his deal was. They chewed slower and slower the more I talked. I got my photos and jumped back into the bucky only to find the family of four Giraffes nibbling on the Acacia’s and needle bushes. I pulled up and watched them nibble and cry. When I first I saw the Papa Giraffe cry I thought he was in pain from the plethora of ticks attached to the inner sides of his thighs and around his genitalia. After having a fear that the Giraffe maybe under a tick infestation I did my research and found that Giraffes have no tear ducts. I also have closed tear ducts and I feel for the Giraffe. But I never have to worry about flies on or around my eyes.

Each and everyday I awake to find the sunlight filtering through the Moringa oleifera outside my bedroom window on to my make shift bed created by joining two twin mattresses, so soft that I wake up in the depression left by my sleeping body. The nights are filled with silence and then are disturbed by grazing Spingbok and Nyala that clumsily bump into the sides of my dark cold cabin. The wind howls and the animals shriek all throughout the night. I jump at any sound, which makes me feel like I am being invaded or watched. The nights are different. With each waking day I find the sunlight accompanying, its presence creates a new sanctuary filled with the morning birds singing new songs.
On my morning drives around the preserve I find the Nyala, Greater Kudu, and Blessbok gathered around the corners of the lake and the Gazelles on the levi fleeing in every direction when they hear my bucky approaching up the path. All the animals don’t mind when I park my car to gaze into their eyes but once I open the car door they jump up in fear and dart away.

The Greater Kudu and the Nyala both belong to the same genus, Tragelaphus. Not as large as the largest Gazelle related animal, the Eland, but they stand large and elegant. The Nyala has a large white bar across his nose and white strips that flare down the sides of his body. It was only after a chance encounter when I found the Nyala grazing outside of my living room window, that I felt safe knowing that such a large animal keeps me up during the cold and lonely nights.

The day grows colder with each rotation of the Earth sending South Africa deeper in to winter. The mornings are welcoming and warm, the sun embraces the plains and spark fires in the afternoon. Smoke rises from every direction, the sun directly above blazes the bush into embers sending the Blessbok to nod for forgiveness. The Gazelles leap high sending their hind legs into the air breaking a distance away from the ground that bursts into flames. Winter parches the thirst of all living animals, the dry season makes the dirt settle into the nostrils of all breathing life forms. The water has receded in all the wetlands and lakes, trash that once was submerged now stands out to be collected. Insects buzz through the air landing on my skin at every opportunity to moisten themselves on my sweat.

Not a day has gone by where my heart laments for more sunlight, the cold nights can send fear in to a uncommon dweller. It is only when I look up to see the stars lighting up the night that I am reminded once more of my insignificance, just as I am at home. One more pebble in the sea of sand.