The valley of mists

 30 years ago, when I was very young, I got fed up with society and dropped out for a while.  The place I chose to camp out for 4 months, was an empty house in a place called “The Downs” up in the mountains near Tzaneen, a town in the Limpopo Province of South Africa.  

 I was there half legally. My friend was a state game ranger and one of his tasks was to look after areas bought by the government for future nature conservation reserves.  He was the one who originally brought me up the mountain to show me – not knowing that I will develop an obsession to live there for a while.  He negotiated a letter from his boss which confirmed that I was allowed in the area. He also brought me a small gas stove and single bed.  That was all the furniture in the house.

 This area had a large indigenous forest and there were rare butterfly species along the rivers. Avocado orchards still flourished and one of the grandsons of the well-known Orrie Baragwanath, and his family lived a few km from me.  They had secured a contract to harvest the fruits for a few years. 

 Even now, 30 years later, I can’t recall being in a place more beautiful than this.  The house I lived in (Haffenden Heights) had the mountain range to its back, bringing on evening quite early.  My water supply came from a small reservoir, which was fed directly from a stream in the mountain – open a tap in the house, and you got water from the mountain stream . . .  I had to heat water outside in a steel drum to make bath water.  The faint sweet scent of jasmine was brought on the evening breeze, from one of the empty farm houses close by. 

 My staple food was maize, rice and avocado.  A lane of huge pecan nut trees hugged the footpath to the pool and waterfall I frequented daily.  Some of the empty farmyards had a few fruit trees, and for a few weeks I had mulberries and oranges.  A few weeks into my stay I had more frequent contact with the Baragwanaths, although many days went by without me speaking a word to anyone.  A young boy who lived in the mountains visited infrequently and we had a relationship of mutual benefit:  I taught him English and he would bring me whatever took his fancy:  goats’ milk and wood was the two resources I appreciated most. It was not so easy for a young city girl to cut those large black wattle branches into smaller pieces of wood to fit into my fireplace or water drum.  His name was really Magic, as in my story of The Magic Boy. Magic’s family brought me 4 hens and a large rooster, supplementing my protein intake.  From my side I brought them maize, rice, tea, and sugar.