Five days in the Wilderness
WILDERNESS ABOVE AND BELOW
After over twenty years of freediving and extensive ocean exploration, there are not too many experiences in the ocean that really gets my heart rate up anymore. Maybe sometimes when I’m surfing and the swell gets really big, or when I have clients with me and the one hammerhead circling turns into five. But mostly these days, I know my aquatic habitat well enough to be prepared for just about anything. Last month Peter and I decided to get our oceanic adventure souls into a bit of a different environment and we signed up for five day Wilderness Trail in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi game reserve. This beautiful reserve is a few hours north of Durban on the South African east coast and is one of the oldest and most celebrated of our big parks. As you might know, I am forever searching for wild. Wild nature, wild ideas and a wildness within. Well…
Our friendly guides picked us up in Durban and drove straight into the famous Imfolozi Wilderness area - as far as you can get by car. Dividing five days worth of food and utensils between us we carefully packed our 75l backpacks with sleeping mat & bag, two t-shirts, one hoodie and comfy pants for night time (yep, that’s it!). We were instructed not to pack any toiletries, definitely no deodorant and as little as possible of anything else as we will be carrying everything with us. We hoisted our bags and set off on foot, away from the car, the roads, the lodges and any other signs of human conquest, into the wilderness area. Sitting down just beyond the first ridge our guides Mandla and Siphiwe give our briefing. ‘This is the border between civilisation and the wilderness. For those of you who haven’t been here in a long time, welcome home.’ Always walk in single file, close enough to touch the person in front of you’s backpack. No talking. If we shout cover, take cover. Rhinos have bad eyesight but keen smell, get behind or up a tree. ‘Yes we are carrying guns, but we don’t want to use them. Never in twenty years of the Wilderness Leadership School have we had to shoot any animal. Be responsible so we don’t have to.’
We walk. In silence in single file. My heart rate pumping as we pass through a densely forested area and hear a loud crack. Mandla’s hand goes up and we stop… listen. He takes a few more steps and motions for us to back up and we take a different path. ‘Elephants feeding’ the news gets whispered down the line. The paths we are on have been created by animals, buffalo, rhino and impala tracks lead us forward, silently we follow. A quick rest and firewood collection in the early afternoon before struggling through scratching bushes to find ourselves on a series of ledges overlooking the swirling brown water of the Black Imfolozi. The name black from sediment found along the banks, she meanders through the rolling hills to meet up with her sister the White Imfolozi with her light sandy banks before the rush down to the ocean together.
On the banks of the Black Imfolozi we make our camp. River sand is pulled onto the rock so a fire can be prepared and all ash be washed away with the sand next morning, leaving no trace, no stain, no soot. As Siphiwe lights the fire two large buffalo watch us from the other bank, snorting and shaking their giant heads. They are worryingly unperturbed. ‘We used to camp higher up in the open, but too many nights we had elephant and buffalo in the camp, so now we always sleep on the river ledges’, Mandla reads our anxious minds. ‘The only thing you really need to be careful of here is leopards.’ Wait… what? ‘That’s why we have night watch. He explains how each night we will take turns to protect the camp. Sitting by the fire to keep it burning low, then getting up every ten minutes to shine a bright torch into the bushes surrounding the sleeping group, no tents no covers, just the stars above us. 'The only thing you need to worry about is two eyes facing forwards. That’s a cat. If a cat finds us, keep shining the torch and keep watching, call for help. Don’t turn away.’ Peter and I look at each other with wide eyes ‘A bit like sharks then’ Peter comments softly. Yes, a bit like sharks. But so very very different and new.
Every time I bring first-timers into a wild ocean I explain ‘you are not on the menu, sharks don’t really eat people…’ and so on, adjusting perspectives and dismantling irrational fears. That first night on the banks of the Black Imfolozi I was certain there were leopards hunting us. Every time I shined I tricked myself into believing I saw two eyes facing forwards. Like being a beginner again, I considered wilderness. Our place in nature and how vulnerable we are away from all the things we’ve built to separate ourselves from the elements and beasts. How very successful we have been and how great that separation has grown. And all we have lost with it. A loud grunting growling sound wakes me from my reverie staring at the flames and I jump up to shine shine shine… no eyes. ‘Leopard on the other side of the river’ Mandla whispers sleepily out of the dark. I take a few deep breaths and make another cup of tea. Shine shine shine… until the star I’m using as my time keeper has moved six fingers, roughly one hour and a half. I wake up Noa, who has night watch after me. Tells her what I heard (not what I think I saw) and leave her to keep watch, crawling into my warm sleeping bag, counting shooting stars until I fall asleep.
For five days we walked in silence, slept on different ledges along the brown river. Swam in shallow water while the guides kept a lookout for crocodiles, ate long lunches during the heat of the day under acacia trees with rhinos grazing upwind. We grew gradually quieter, calmer and dirtier. We had come home to place our souls remember.
On our last day we sat in a circle, with a talking stick in the middle and the opportunity for the stick holder to speak of their experience. One by one the stick got picked up, hearts opened and wilderness thoughts shared. As I picked up the stick work smooth by many hands, I couldn’t stop the tears. ‘I don’t want to leave, I’m not ready.’ I covered my face and cried. Cried for the beauty and the privilege of the days gone by, cried for the rhinos who’s middens we passed but who are no longer there because of us. Cried for what we have lost and for what we still have and how precarious it all seems. The group waited with respect and some with tears as I tried to collect myself, for once struggling to find words. ‘We have to move’ Mandla says softly, lifting the talking stick from my hands. ‘Rhinos’. And just outside of our circle three rhinos are grazing closer and closer, one of them a small baby. We softly hoist our bags and cross over the ridge back to where we started.
For those five days I found the same me I usually only access underwater, on land. Swopping whales for rhinos and sharks for leopards we allowed ourselves to be assimilated into wilderness. Blurring the lines between tame and wild, human and animal. And as I always feel when I step into the ocean - my soul had come home.
First published as my regular column in Oceanographic Magazine 2019
