Stevenson-Hamilton’s Ghosts
I would guess for most Guides that have chosen a life far
away in the breathtaking beauty of our parks and private reserves, their
journey along this chosen path would have begun with a seed planted somewhere
in their past. That seed would found its way through a myriad of floodwater's,
drainage lines and waterways before settling in a patch of fertile soil that
would forever be their base, somewhere that was permanently etched into their
soul.
My seed into my chosen passion without doubt had made its
way from the apparent hustle and bustle of Joburg’s suburbs down the escarpment
along the ample drainage lines of the Lowveld eventually finding its home on
the banks of Kruger’s great rivers.
Somewhere underneath the branches of the magnificent
Sycamore Figs with their leopard inviting rotund braches and the deep dark bark
of its Jackalberry trees my heart was sold forever.
Moving through Kruger on a late May morning with winter
knocking hard on its door Kruger’s Majesty is clear to see...The augmented
leaves of the Red Bushwillow blanketing the Lowveld Catena with their brilliant
hue of reds, oranges and yellows betraying the presence of Kudu looking to
profit from the last of the leaves nutrition.
Along a dusty track skirting the edge of the Biyamiti River you
are greeted by a grove of ancient Apple Leafs and Knobthorn’s their sacrificial
branches reaching out like welcoming old friends. These giant guardians of the
river then open up revealing the Biyamiti’s pale alluvial soil hiding a pride
of narcoleptic lions resting in the shadows of Wild Date Palms.
Kruger is a visceral experience something you smell, hear
and taste the musky smell of the White Rhino’s fermented middens attacking your
senses with their earthy notes.You drive down a corrugated dirt road dipping into a drainage
line from one of the river’s quartzite crags, the inviting smell of the Potato
Bush drifts through your window offering you soul food of the potato soup for
the soul variety.
You coast along the girth of the Sabie River....large pods
of portly sunbathing hippo’s dive into its chilly perennial waters scaring the
daylights out of Water Monitors and Saddlebilled Storks alike, old Buffalo “daggaboys”
sneakily preside over the Phragmites reed beds waiting to accost someone or
something.
Everything in Kruger seems to have some ancient tale or
relation... the ancient Leadwood’s with bark the texture of the grand old Elephants
that rub off Kruger’s eon old mud onto its conveniently rough trunk.
Kruger’s landscape is littered with long deceased remains of
these old Leadwood’s with their cold dead branches eerily reaching up into the
Lowveld’s pale blue sky acting like the ghosts of Col. Stevenson Hamilton
himself presiding over what he first established more than a hundred years ago.
In a fortnight I return permanently to the Greater Kruger
area, it’s clear to me that my heartwood like that of the colossal trees of
this area is firmly rooted in Kruger’s archaic soil.
