“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” ― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Magalieberg – 2001:
Something was different. It didn’t really matter that I was suspended above the ground – ungrounded – a transitory sky person. The ambience seemed surreal; the outside world remarkably distant and tuned far out of my mind’s personal radio station.
Long grass dappled by ochre and wheat highlights winged perpetually across the Magaliesberg landscape, interrupted occasionally by sharp-edged Acacias. Warm air held a hint of breeze as the sun’s rays struck all in it’s destined path. This was the land that had imperceptibly slipped into my blood. Seventy kilometres away, Jo’burgs chaotic existence – it’s crime, noise and pollution, was hard to imagine.
I was held within the grip of a thorn tree, its unrelenting spiky fingers digging into yielding flesh. Shivering and undressed, balanced precariously between two shaky branches, I took a moment to look around; the bizarre situation zoomed into clarity. Reaching for my jeans in the top of the Acacia, I screamed at the excited young baboon who was gecking with blatant mirth at what must have seemed like apparent helplessness.
“Ah-ah-ahah-ahah”, her tooth covered grin had little effect on calming me.
Karma was nearly one year old – a provocative female baboon intent on gaining points for her big brother Darwin. One day he would provide better protection for her than myself, her substitute mum. Already she knew how to please him; they both looked annoyingly happy.
Earlier, after chopping some dry pine, I had laboriously put the fire together in the kind of detached manner that is the way of one who is distracted; I still had one foot in baboon life and the other forever trapped in civilisation - this is an interesting but confusing place to be as both have their seductive pros and their unwanted cons. Then I had heated water for a much needed outdoor bath (outside was where most cleaning activities occurred due to the absence of a suitable enclosed structure); daily living happened amongst the long tawny grasses, smoky-seeped sunsets, snakes, raptors and soul shattering call of the Jackal. It was a lifestyle that owns you – mind body and willing spirit. Living outdoors with naughty baboon kids demanded constant alertness, you simply had to be
mentally awake, you even learnt to do this after bedtime.
Before climbing into welcome water, I had quickly shoved my clothing into the child-proof cage, but Karma had forced it open, taking all belongings off into thorny branches that had swiftly attached themselves to willing fabric. Once out the bath, there was no alternative but to climb naked up the rough trunk – and here, barely aware of torn skin amidst the transparent infinite space, observing undressed emotions subside, words scrambled to make sense of things.
I noticed the extent of the shift. The voice inside that watches - as if from a distance - spoke;
What is it that has changed?
Events of recent years appeared to have culminated in this cathartic expulsion of buried emotions. Liberation stared.
Privately I thanked them, the troop with whom I share my life, kin whose emotional language is uncannily similar to ours. The inner shift clearly had something to do with them.
Abel’s burly presence appeared from behind a bush propelling me back into human language. Fortunately I was on the ground, dressed and expressing uncontrolled emotions intent on a journey without brakes. The juveniles had hidden.
The large frame of the man had stopped as if in frozen trance, his dark glistening skin omitting the salty odour of heavy physical labour and his stance claimed exhaustion. He seemed pensive after a day of cutting down alien vegetation and searching the diverse mountain for poacher’s traps and their tortured innocent victims. I regretfully noticed an impulsive quickening of his footsteps as if to escape the emotional landscape.
“They are just animals” he muttered so softly I barely heard him.
Not part of the close circle of friends, family. Not part of the species; less than human strangers; just monkeys.
I noted my language; the staring eyes, the waving arms, one foot stamping the ground – “ah! NO!” - now facing the two guilty ones head on - unconsciously speaking an intuitive language that had become second nature over time. Certainly, this was a far cry from the self-conscious restrained manner in which humans generally communicated – understandably it would appear as an alien language to most.
Years of living close to non-human primates has revealed a lost self.
And then I remembered the dream.