WILDERNESS

This trail is different because I’m different. My life is different. I am unhurried, detached from the normal course of time, and unfettered by daily obligations. I'm no longer in the realm of the young and productive, unaffected by ambition or the pursuit of something other than my existing circumstance. I have created this reality, chiseled it from rock and earth, and set it in stone. It cannot be removed from my grip. I have earned this freedom, fought for it with blood, sweat, and tears.

It is a different kind of pilgrimage, one that winds between the ocean’s rhythmic rumble and the forests that hold their secrets close. The air is sweet with spring, heavy with the smell of fynbos in bloom, their small blossoms turning the slopes into scattered mosaics of color. Bougainvillea spills over fences, bright as a painter’s brushstroke.

We walk with the sun at our backs, our steps softened by sandy trails and paths where the dew still clings. At roadside stalls, farmers offer us bags of naartjies, oranges with skin so loose it slips off with just a press of the thumb. Their sweetness stains our palms, and we carry the scent with us as we make our way to quieter pastures. We eat avocados, fat and creamy, spread on rough brown bread, and the salt of goat’s cheese lingers on the tongue. Sometimes, we share dried mangoes and nuts; other times, we are given guavas or the best of the season’s grapes...sweet and fragrant, their seeds crunching like tiny notes carried by the breeze.

The ocean is never far. It whispers beneath the cliffs, the salt carried inland on soft winds, and sometimes we pause where the land dips toward the shore. We wash our faces, letting the cold water remind us of where we are and how alive we remain. At night, we sleep light and open, curled under corrugated verandas of farmhouses or stretched out in sleeping bags, the stars a wild scattering above. The sky here is vast, unbroken, and when the Milky Way unspools across it, we are hushed, for no words seem worthy.

Here we break bread with the locals and trade stories for cups of hot, fragrant tea in blue and beige tin mugs. I curl my lips around the smooth edge, slurping greedily before making my way to a makeshift bed on their porch under the starlight. Fajr comes before the birds stir, and we pray in the dim blue, the grass still jeweled with dew, the air cool enough to sting our breath. Our foreheads press to the earth, and it feels as though the land itself is listening, as though every prayer is received by the soil. The silence after is filled with the rustle of leaves, the slow creak of the forest waking.

We walk on, bodies weary but spirits unburdened. The trails meander through valleys where the scent of wild rosemary and buchu rises as we brush past. Proteas lift their faces to the sun, rugged and regal. We make our way slowly down slopes and through valleys to find a spot to rest our weary bodies. And when at rest, once again the mind spins and spools... but all it can do is latch on to the wonder of the trees and their soft whispers.

We eat simple food along the way: spicy lentil soups ladled into tin bowls, roosterkoek pulled hot off coals and sticky with apricot jam, fish fresh from the sea, grilled and eaten with fingers while the skin still crackles.

By the last day, our feet are blistered but our hearts are full, softened by the kindness of strangers, the patience of the path, and the abundance of the land. The city, with its horns and screeches, feels impossibly far, as though it belongs to another life. Here, silence is no longer strange. Peace has found us.

And so we keep walking, further still, for as long as the road allows. And when we finally arrive, we will know that it was all worth it.