Shelter from the Storm

I was three weeks in the Kloof before it started raining. 21 days of dancing under the radar, tucked deep amongst buffalo herds and roaming leopards. Somehow, Pieter V agreed to house me in exchange for feeding his dogs and watching his guest house.
It’s a strange life in the kloof, visitors are few, friends dotted along the valley in various shades, each community hosting a different worldview, each bound to each other through circumstance and a single dusty road.
The rain made the Baviaanskloof a whole new ballgame, rivers appearing where stones had stood, rivers becoming raging torrents, un-buffered, depositing downloads of sticks and stones, the water soaked to the bones.
This is water scarce country and yet, when the rain comes down like this and out of season, it heals and damages, like licking honey off a knife.


Still there were dry fireplace nights and days, few guests wandered past cos the road was washed into temporary oblivion,
the pit-pat-splish-splash soundtrack with crackling woodburn harmonies breaking the monotony of a life in the country, marooned in a dessert of a farm, islands of people watching the Baviaans River swell and burst.
Another log in the fire...