experience
each return trip
deepened my love for the bush
it feels like home
I had favourites, of course – the perfect roundness of a Pearl-spotted owlet, the compact form and impossible blue of a kingfisher’s breast, the teddy-bear faces of a waterbuck. Feeling dusty and happily exhausted after the day. Roasting marshmallows on the dying embers of a braai. Now that I’m an adult, I see and feel it through a different lens. It encapsulates peace and space. An opportunity to form connections and strengthen others. Breathe fresh air, hear myself think, sit in silence, and enjoy instead the beautiful noise of nature. The same bird calls welcome you back. It’s merely another
aspect of it – a little quieter than the wide-eyed excitement of youth, but no less filled with awe. The fire still draws me near, offering consistent comfort. A way to close out the day. The next phase of this continuing love affair is the anticipation of sharing it with the children of our generation. Experiencing that same wonder and sense of freedom again through the eyes of people I love, whose interests and dreams are still forming. A foot in both my past and my present. To feel excitement on their behalf for the potential of the deepening of reverence over time. To watch them settle into that same feeling of home.
Left The primal pull of a fire at sunset is inextricably linked to the bush experience.
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