A Boy, a Girl and a Whale of a Trail

for K.S.

Ah! Our Whale Trail! A 55 km five-day hiking trail found at De Hoop Nature Reserve, near Cape Town. This precious slice of coastline protects southern right whales when the time comes to calf, mate and frolic in the safe surge of surf and kelp. Cape Vultures, Eagles, and seabirds whirl and dive, calling, always calling: then falling silent as they glide on the breeze. I'm sure I heard them call out my name, at least once. If you listen closely you can hear your future in the wind.

Here, flowers smile, beam, glow, seem to whisper…proteas, ericas, vygies, their grace is unique and unparralled. Perched on a comfortable rock, you can see into forever, your forever, the one you're creating right now.

But! This, isn't a story about whales! Instead it is the story of a boy, a girl and a dream. We'll call the boy LovelyOne and the girl well… you know her as Capegirl.

LovelyOne and I mapped and constructed much of the Whale Trail. Each morning CapeGirl and LovelyOne set out in their big truck with a team of 9 men (grumpy, happy, snoozy..well you get the picture..) and began the task of finding a way to promote nature while making sure it was protected. The maps were anchored with rocks against the bluster of the south east wind as we imagined, imagined, imagined and then walked. We walked those km's all of them, often doubling back to reconsider, adjust and imagine some more.

At tea time we sat on a rock together and ate sandwiches, drank cheap cooldrink from flasks and coffee, always coffee, enjoyed just in time, to coincide with perfect coffee temperatures. In the mist, we sat, in the rain we sat, feeling the sun begin to peep through the clouds, hoping we'd remembered the sun cream that day.

And how we talked and talked, arriving breathless on one outcrop after another we chose the best routes, the best views, the best Zen winding paths we could dream into being, marking them out with endless reams of red and white hazard tape, guiding the cutters through the bushes over the bushes, into valleys, onto rocky outcrops, onto sandy beaches, through spiky thorn bushes and crumbling cliff edges. Careful, be careful don't slip!

Then the construction began, the poles, endless poles, and boards and nails, the blisters, the sweat, the heat, the aching muscles, the smiles, the laughter, the talking, always talking and wishing it would never end. My heart was glad, always glad, there was nothing to do but work and enjoy the beauty and bounty of one of the most heartwrenchingly secret places on earth.

All too soon, the powers that were my bosses at the time, summoned me back to my base in Hermanus. I won't go into that to protect the not-so-innocent. With sadness I told LovelyOne I wouldn't be coming back, I was needed elsewhere. You can't know how much I rued missing out on that helicopter ride.

Six or so years later, on this very night, I remember that time when LovelyOne and I dreamed a dream of a trail of whales. A time when I was purely, innocently happy. A time when I can honestly say I felt free. Now I know by now, you're all thinking that LovelyOne and I were lovers. Aren't you? The truth is he had a wonderful girlfriend and we were nothing more than colleagues, who became friends. I haven't seen him since, though I heard he's done some work saving our national bird, the blue crane.

The special thing about LovelyOne was the way he treated people, especially women. In my mind he lives on as one of the few people, I've encountered that treated me as though I had something to offer, not something to prove. There is no measuring that. No way to quantify the extreme care and respect he lavished on me, in his easy, gentle way.

There are some things I'll never forget and one of them is this: when soon after, it was discovered by my doctor that this sort of lifting and hammering had damaged my body in places too precious to mention he said "why did it have to happen to such a wonderful person?" Thank you LovelyBoy, that meant a lot. I esteemed you ditto.

I blossomed when I was around him and there was no real way to explain that. We worked as a team and it was probably the best working relationship I've ever had. So LovelyBoy wherever you are now, without these wonderful memories, this night would have been a lot less gossamer. And to answer your question: "So I could hold onto the memories, when I needed them most. May you always be downwind from a fire and never be pecked on the nose by a penguin, go well, LovelyBoy"

p.s. click on the "Whale Trail" link for more pictures and the route, if you're interested.

thanks for reading my little "thank you" and for still being here, Opera buddies and hold on to those good people and memories when things get a tad chilly, as they are wont to do at times. :heart:

CapeGirl