As I open the car door, the warm air swirls the dust into the car, settling as a fine matte layer over everything and into every nook and cranny. I have, since moving here, stopped worrying about a dirty car…it signifies my new life:)

 The corrugated dirt road I have just traveled , runs east to west  parallel to the Swartberg Mountain range. The late afternoon shadows start to lengthen as  I stoop through the ill kempt wire fence, lifting the bottom strand for Sasha. She heads off nose down along this now familiar path darting here and there testing small lizards basking in the last of the days warmth. I wonder what stories her scents could tell?

I watch where I am going too, this is the end of a long hot summer and snakes may be out, but I’ve only seen a few on these walks. Karoo Sand Snakes also known as Whip snakes and a Horned Adder lurking in the sand between small stones.

At first glance the land around me looks dry, barren and uninteresting. Normally landscapes and paintings of landscape have something majestic in them or a dramatic focal point that claims the viewers attention. Not here, in a single glance the foreground is initially seen and disregarded and the distant Swartberg range is just a tinge of muted colour shortening the horizon, the small  undulating treeless hills in the middle distance break the two, and that is about as dramatic as it gets – until you look closely to what is right in front of you. 

That is when the magic appears. I am walking over a flint factory – hundreds of shards of sharp chert, a sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide , where recent bushmen  or other hominids before them worked with this hard stone – flaking it expertly, making the tools they needed to skin an animal, make an arrowhead for a bow or perhaps a larger piece to scrap bark or cut meat and hides. I have also found some tear dropped shaped stone cores here, rocks that have had the flakes removed and sculpted into hand held axe like tools for digging, crushing, pounding or cutting.
Squatting down, rubbing my fingers over still sharp chert edges feeling the contrast of the smooth middle – I am almost transported back to that time and place and try and imagine what it may have looked like, who has worked and walked here over the last few hundred years. I imagine them sitting on haunches chipping away,  conversing with clicks, discussing the next hunt or where they may find water.

I  rise and walk slowly over the light coloured flakes and down into a dry river bed, lined with sweet thorn acacia – Vachellia Karroo – This is beautiful and useful tree that usually survives and thrives in these harsh conditions. It is the most common tree in Southern Africa. Its very long tap root enables it to get nutrients and water from deep within the ground. There is an interesting symbiotic relationship between the roots and a fungus, where atmospheric nitrogen is fixed.  In addition to the tree and the fungus benefiting, the environment eventually also benefits from this effect.This nitrogen allows grasses and other plants to survive in its shadow.

It’s thorny branches hold nests that are well protected from predators and at least 10 species of caterpillars are dependent on this tree for their survival:) Its rough bark is home to many small insects, which in turn attract birds. Because of its deep root system, the trees give a good indication of where to find water.   The inner bark can be used to make rope, which, unlike leather, does not stretch when wet.  The red-brown gum is edible – hence the common name “sweet thorn”.   People and animals can consume the transparent gum.  It can also used for glazing pottery!  The thorns could be used for pegs or pins. It’s seeds can be used as a coffee substitute…but I have not tried this!!  Sadly due to the recent severe and persistent drought, some of these trees succumbed and those that are not harvested for firewood, slowly rot, but during that process other microbiomes spring up in the decay just under the soil or in the folds of the falling bark. Such magic happening quietly out of site. Nature prevails even in death.

Under each living tree tree is a complete micro ecosystem, shrubs, grasses, ants, worms, beetles, fungi…… and then even smaller ones in or on the soil. Each one in symbiosis with the other and altogether surviving to benefit themselves and the other. There is a fine balance in nature that is not competitive, but complementary and complete. I sit and watch and wish humans were as cooperative and affiliated. 

I move along the dry river and up a gentle slope where the rocks and stones have changed colour and shape. If you carefully lift some of the bigger ones you will find the odd scorpion or centipede, some larger rocks are already upturned and their treasure raided by baboons or bat eared fox.

There are many excavations and burrows in the ground, large and small probably dug by porcupines or perhaps an aardvark, polecat, weasel, or genet and other never seen nocturnal creatures who forage in the area for bulbs and insects. A little further along in the less rocky soil, are large aardvark holes, some have middens a short distance from the entrance and some abandoned ones are being used for daytime shelter by rabbits and bat eared fox. 

If I look carefully there are areas of petrified wood……fossilised wood, fragments of a time long past when man did not live here, but glaciers moved slowly to the west as what was part of Gondwanaland, before the continents separated…..how can this barren looking place be so interesting! I walk here often and am never be bored:)