CHAPTER 25 - The last word - Born at the wrong time

Quathlamba

“A mass of Spears. Named thus by the Zulu warriors before the white man came. Today called the Drakensberg, Mountains of the Dragon. Evocative names, both equally applicable to South Africa’s mightiest mountain range with its spear-like peaks – reminiscent of the saw-toothed spine of a gigantic dragon.”

“Listen to the streams as they gurgle from their cradles and you will hear the story of the mountains. You will hear fascinating tales if only you listen! Lie next to a stream and listen to the song of the mountains. The smiling faces of the flowers, dancing in the wind. Venture into the remote valleys or stand on a peak at sunrise or sunset, after snow has fallen, and you will hear a song that you will never forget - the Song of the High Mountain".

DRAKENSBERG WILDERNESS PHOTOS © WILLEM PELSER

“SOMETIMES DREAMS CAN BECOME REALITY. IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHETHER WE HAVE THE GUTS TO ACT OUT OUR DREAMS.”

Willem Pelser

CHAPTER 25

The last word

Born at the wrong time

(The last chapter from my book ‘Drakensberg Wilderness – A Solo Journey through Paradise.’)

Writing this book brought back many memories, all of them special. I would love to have all those moments and discoveries all over again. I have become a wild man at heart, at peace in the wilderness.

The Drakensberg Wilderness holds no fear for me; it is my sanctuary, a place where I do not have to pretend. I belong there, part of a life far removed from civilian life.

Solo hiking a wilderness means that you rely on your-self and your capabilities. Your longevity depends entirely on what is between your ears and in your backpack. Hiking a wilderness is also not about survival; if you have to ‘survive’ it means that you are in trouble, that you did something cardinally wrong. I live in the wilderness, I do not survive. Respect for the wilderness and for the force of Mother Nature and being well prepared will always prevent you having to ‘survive’.

Childhood dreams of becoming a wilderness explorer came to fruition, although very late in life. My dreams have not told a lie, but proved to be even more than what my wild-est imagination could come up with. How I hate those wasted moments and years in between. But, I am still alive and I am breathing; that is enough to act on my dreams which have now become a reality. For me it would be the ideal world if, one day, when it’s time for me to depart this world, that at the instance of my last breath, I will be able to close my eyes in the wilderness I so love, my last image of life one of spectacular beauty; that my last breath will escape from me and softly disappear over the long grass of a hill in front of me. That the last voices I will hear will be the song of the mountain which I have heard and listened to on so many occasions during a hike.

I do not hike the wilderness just for the beauty of it, for the splendor, for the photo opportunities or to prove how strong I am, how far I can go; there is a deeper meaning, a spiritual connection, an unbreakable bond. Very few people will understand what I am saying, but they are there; those who trespass in the wilderness and experience a unique life.

Today, in the modern age, we humans are just trespassing in the wilderness when we hike, and we have to leave again. Hopefully when we leave, we leave only our footprints behind. Gone are those days when earth was mostly a vast wilderness and man could find paradise, built a shelter and live happily ever after. Man very early on started off on a path of destruction, greedily exploiting the resources of earth which took millions of years to be created. The more we had the more we wanted. Our vast intelligence was never used for protection and preservation. Even today, knowing the consequences of our actions or of an action, we still go ahead and do it. How on earth did it happened that wilderness areas had to be proclaimed as parks or reserves, fenced off and some even having armed rangers to protect it from no less than other intelligent humans? It makes no sense at all.

Today, as have been the case for many years, people still hunt, mostly for trophies in this modern age or for “fun”. Why? All you have to do is to go to the nearest supermarket or butchery and you can get all the meat you want at less of an effort than hunting. Hundreds of years ago man domesticated animals to feed themselves and to have an easy meat supply. Today, there are millions and millions of cattle, sheep, and pigs’, there is no shortage of domesticated animal meat available anywhere in the world, yet we still have to hunt down wild animals. Trapping animals for their fur still carries on to this day, why? Man has the machines and technology to make available a similar looking piece of fake fur with no effort. Yet we have to hunt down and kill a fur bearing animal with no mercy at all. What does it do to a person to drape a piece of fur around them, is it a feeling of power? Is it a feeling of ‘I am the greatest being in the world’? Or is it simply that deep down his little brain acknowledges that one day it will die and what happens to earth is of no consequence at all, I will be dead in any case? Somebody once said that hunting is not a sport, for it to be a sport; both sides should know they are in the game. Can you imagine what would happen if we look after and care for the wildernesses and wild animals in the same way as we look after our gardens at home and our domestic animals?

Once man moved out of the wilderness and started living in cities, and his life no longer depended on the preservation of that wilderness, his psychological make-up changed. Today man gets up in the morning, moves out of his 4 square walls of a home, get in his car, travel to his workplace, and sit between four walls for the day. Once the day is done he gets back in his car and travel home where he spends the night be-tween four walls and so he will repeat the process day by day. Weekends will have you stay between four walls for 2 days. It is therefore no wonder that man has become this opinioned, frustrated, and destructive force. Because life has now also became very easy; food can be had anywhere, man no longer have to walk anywhere and shelter can be paid for and comes in all shapes and sizes, nothing else in lives matter anymore. They have become lazy and suffer all sorts of ailments because of it. The human body was never designed to sit for 24hrs a day. Should calamity one day strike earth, very few people will be able to survive; they just do not possess the inborn capabilities to survive outside of civilization.

Humans are unexplainable beings. They use their intelligence in a very counterproductive manner. He has become this sensitive insecure person whose well-being depends on the opinions of others. It so happens that those who are strong, independent people, going about their own business; are normally the outcasts from society as they do not fit into the acceptable norm. Society views those who are strong enough to stand on their own and who do not have to be part of a group or cult with great suspicion. They are labeled anti-social and become outcasts. The irony is that to those ‘lone wolf’s’ it does not matter as they do not need society. There is a saying: “No man can be an island”. Really? I totally disagree; a single man can be a continent.

Not only does man harm the wilderness and wildlife, but seek to destroy the well-being of fellow humans.

In some people however, deep inside of them, you will still find the adventurer, the explorer, the protector of nature. There is this age old voice which calls to them and most will heed the call.

Life in a wilderness, even though it is for just a few days, is a totally different experience to today’s civilian life. All of a sudden all your senses start to operate again, you can breathe again, and we use our bodies for the purpose it was designed for. Walking in the wilderness you can feel life cruising through your veins.

The Drakensberg Wilderness was created millions of years ago. If today it is paradise, imagined what it looked like then. Again, because of the actions of man it is a sliver today of what it was then. Nature is one thing man cannot create. He cannot even recreate it. He can only conserve and protect it. One need not destroy in order to protect. You can only really enjoy it if you are appreciating the wilderness and appreciation is inextricably linked to conservation.

I so envy those who first set foot in the Drakensberg hundreds of years ago and found paradise, a place rich in plant and wildlife. What was their reaction when they first said foot in the wilderness? Was it one of awe and inspiration? With the arrival of the Voortrekkers and the Settlers we now know through historical accounts that it was one of greed and destruction. Granted, a few people did appreciate and acknowledge the beauty, but they were the minority by far.

Today the Drakensberg Wilderness is still an exceptionally beautiful place. It is one of the most beautiful places in South Africa. It has it all; mountains, peaks, valleys, forests, its own weather system and the song of the mountains. It is rugged and remote.  In winter she puts on her robe of white, in summer she paints it all green and flowers burst forth and clad the hills in a riot of color. Rivers and streams dance through the lost valleys, finding their way through rocks and boulders, singing an age old song as they go along.

The Drakensberg Wilderness has become my place of refuge; a place where humans and their iffy self-created problems and opinions does not matter at all. I can disappear for days into this wilderness and have it all to myself, living an uncomplicated life.

Once I started walking the Drakensberg Wilderness, doing the day walks only, I dreamt of long solitary hikes, where I could make my own way and rely on myself. I acted out that dream and I found Paradise. Paradise is indeed a place on earth. I still dream today. I still dream of lost valleys. I still dream of lofty peaks and the lairs of Dragons. I can see the fairies, trolls, and angels in the little Gardens of Eden’s deep inside a secret forest.  I still dream of days gone by hundreds of years ago.

When I first heard the song of the mountains during my first solo long range hike, I was convinced that there were people around me somewhere who were doing the singing. I soon realized however that it was the song of the mountain, clearly audible, a companion. Today, sometimes when I sit between my four walls at home, staring out the window, I can hear that song again, softly singing to me, calling me, and I feel that stirring in my soul, responding to the siren call of the Drakensberg Wilderness.

Many a time I have sat on a rock after a difficult hike, ravenous, tired, my strength exhausted, but blissfully happy. It is that feeling which drives us hikers ever and again for-ward into the wilderness, remote from all life; which impels us to undertake the most fearful exertions, and which drives us far beyond the narrow confines of this world.

I like the taste of freedom in the Wilderness and her mountains, the smell of danger. Sometimes the smell of fear……….            

The End.

Safe Hiking.

References and Acknowledgements

From the book – ‘Drakensberg Wilderness – A Solo Journey Through Paradise’ – Willem Pelser

Photos:  © Willem Pelser

Compiled by:  Willem Pelser

THE EXPLORERS - REINHOLDT MESSNER

Quathlamba

“A mass of Spears. Named thus by the Zulu warriors before the white man came. Today called the Drakensberg, Mountains of the Dragon. Evocative names, both equally applicable to South Africa’s mightiest mountain range with its spear-like peaks – reminiscent of the saw-toothed spine of a gigantic dragon.”

“Listen to the streams as they gurgle from their cradles and you will hear the story of the mountains. You will hear fascinating tales if only you listen! Lie next to a stream and listen to the song of the mountains. The smiling faces of the flowers, dancing in the wind. Venture into the remote valleys or stand on a peak at sunrise or sunset, after snow has fallen, and you will hear a song that you will never forget - the Song of the High Mountain".

DRAKENSBERG WILDERNESS PHOTOS © WILLEM PELSER

“FAR BETTER IT IS TO DARE MIGHTY THINGS EVEN THOUGH CHEQUERED BY FAILURE, THAN TO DWELL IN THAT PERPETUAL TWILIGHT THAT KNOWS NOT VICTORY OR DEFEAT.”

T ROOSEVELDT

THE EXPLORERS

REINHOLDT MESSNER

When one surveys the history of 20^th century mountaineering, one man bestrides the scene with equal dominance: Messner. His surname alone evokes pioneering epics of survival at the highest altitude, images of a smiling man whose face, almost entirely hidden by hair, is more 1970,s rock star than mountaineering legend. First to climb Everest without oxygen in 1978 with Peter Habeler, he went on to become the first man to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre peaks. And, as is inevitable with such extraordinary success, there have always been critics who have made all sorts of sniping comments, from accusing him of having brain damage after prolonged exposure to extreme altitude, to leaving other mountaineers to die on mountains in his overriding bid to reach the top, come what may. Yet the criticisms fail to remove him from his legitimate throne at the very pinnacle of mountaineering greatness. There is no one quite like him. And now, because he has achieved what he has, there never can be.

Messner was born among the mountains in 1944 in Vilnoss in the South Tyrol. Climbing, therefore, was always an entirely natural pursuit. “For me it was quite logical. I was brought up in the Dolomites – the most beautiful rock areas of the world – and we had no swimming pool, no football pitch, so there wasn’t the opportunity to do much else and so we went off and climbed these rocks. The children in the valley did not do this as they had other activities to follow, the cows and doing things in the fields with other small children. We being one daughter and eight sons of a teacher, we went climbing and a few of us became extreme climbers and when I was five I did my first 3,000-metre climb with the parents and mostly later ascents with my brother and when I was 20 I did my first ascent on the Dolomites and all over the Alps.”

By his early twenties Messner was well down the path that would mark him out as a true original in his field. In an era of ‘siege’ mountaineering in which climbers on the tallest peaks ferried equipment up and down to fixed camps to prepare their way to the top on fixed ropes, Messner forged his own very different route. His approach was far simpler and purer, in a sense less antagonistic to the mountain. It involved translating the alpine style to the Himalayas and other great ranges, in short lightweight expeditions and lightning ascents. It was a rejection of oxygen apparatus, fixed high camps, and high-altitude porters. It was self-sufficiency.

His first eight-thousander, Nanga Parbat, came in 1970, but brought tragedy with it in the death of his climbing partner and younger brother Gunther, killed in an avalanche. The others followed steadily over the next two decades, their names familiar to anyone with an interest in this higher world. Manaslu, Hidden Peak, the landmark Everest climb, where he described himself summiting as “nothing more than a single gasp lung”, followed by the supremely difficult K2, and the Shisha Pangma. A ‘hat-trick’ of eight-thousanders in 1982 gave birth to his dream of climbing all fourteen, though he rejects the idea he was ever ‘collecting’ them. There followed Cho Oyu, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri and Makalu. In 1986, 16 years after his first ascent of Nanga Parbat, he descended safely from Lhotse and the record was his, whether he liked it or not.

“Luckily, climbing is not capable of being expressed either in terms of records or by numbers,” he wrote in All 14 Eight-Thousanders. “It certainly cannot be measured in seconds, metres of height or grades.”

“I was lucky; the Gods were kind to me…… We all need luck, for the mountains are infinitely bigger than us. Mere men can never ‘vanquish’ them. ‘Lhagyelo’, the Tibetans say whenever they venture up a mountain or a high pass, and I say it too: ‘The Gods have won’.”

Much of that is true, of course, but mountaineering can be sufficiently recorded and measured to enable us to acknowledge Messner as its greatest ever practitioner. He does not consider himself an explorer. His challenge has always been personal, a question of survival rather than science. “I would like to use the word adventure for my activities, but not exploration,” he states. “Adventuring for me is nothing but the path for surviving. I have exposed myself to high places, cold places, windy places, to dangerous places generally and I try to survive. The whole energy I put in is only to survive in these difficult places and the more dangerous and difficult they are the more difficult it is to survive. So the best adventurer is a women or a man who is accepting all risks and is surviving. The person who is dying in the first or second expedition is not a good adventurer.”

The personal challenges have continued beyond the mountains. In 1990, he made the first crossing of Antarctica on foot, via the South Pole, covering 1,750 miles in 92 days. In 1995, he stated publicly that he had stopped high-altitude climbing, turning his attentions to the Arctic, which he attempted to cross from Siberia to Canada. He has written more than 40 books about his adventures, including his quest for the yeti, which he said he discovered in the form of a Tibetan bear. He went into politics in 1999, serving one term as a member of the European Parliament for the Italian Green Party.

“I am an explorer of my own fear, of my own hopes, of my own dreams, my own possibilities, and in reality my activity is nothing but a passion for limits.”

He has helped define them on the summits of the world.

The End.

Safe Hiking.

References and Acknowledgements

From the book – Faces of Exploration – Joanna Vestey

Photos:  ©Willem Pelser

Compiled by:  Willem Pelser

EARLY TRAVELLERS IN THE DRAKENSBERG

Quathlamba

“A mass of Spears. Named thus by the Zulu warriors before the white man came. Today called the Drakensberg, Mountains of the Dragon. Evocative names, both equally applicable to South Africa’s mightiest mountain range with its spear-like peaks – reminiscent of the saw-toothed spine of a gigantic dragon.”

Listen to the streams as they gurgle from their cradles and you will hear the story of the mountains. You will hear fascinating tales if only you listen! Lie next to a stream and listen to the song of the mountains. The smiling faces of the flowers, dancing in the wind. Venture into the remote valleys or stand on a peak at sunrise or sunset, after snow has fallen, and you will hear a song that you will never forget - the Song of the High Mountain".

DRAKENSBERG WILDERNESS PHOTOS © WILLEM PELSER

“I AM AS OLD AS

MY DISAPPOINTMENTS IN LIFE,

AND AS YOUNG

AS MY NAUGHTIEST THOUGHT”

XAMEB the BUSHMAN

       EARLY  TRAVELLERS IN THE DRAKENSBERG

It was a lonely, empty land into which those first travellers came. The peaks stood remote, far, enigmatic, unknown. Only the Bushmen and the wild game lived in grim solitudes. The foothills, once the peaceful Amazisi, had been ravaged and depopulated by the ravening hordes of Shaka and Matiwane. Only the eagle, soaring a thousand meters up into thin air, watched, and waited.

   It is not surprising that the early colonists were slow in penetrating this mountain world. To a young community, struggling to subdue nature to its needs, mountains are little more than a barrier, a hindrance to travel and to trade. With all their love of beauty and physical fitness the Greeks never awoke to the splendor of their own mountains. They never climbed them for pleasure. It is only later, when increasing prosperity brings leisure, and the pressure of civilization begin to stifle the spirit of man, that mountains come into their own. The golden age of the Alps had to await the climbing of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper in 1865 before it got under way.

   There were other reasons, too, for the Drakensberg not being penetrated earlier, not the least being the fact that up to about 1875 the intruder was, as likely as not, liable to get a poisoned arrow in his back if he ventured too far into the shadow of the great peaks.

      Then, of course, access to the Drakensberg was extremely difficult in those early days. The country was wild and broken, and wagons or horseback were the only means of transport. From Durban up to the road passes of the Drakensberg ran the slender thread of the “main road”, for many years merely a series of winding tracks through the long grass of the veld. Even this was 30 km to the east of the Drakensberg. It was not until the 1850s that a start was made on improving the track between Pietermaritzburg and Durban. Beyond, and for many years, only wagon tracks remained. Hardening only came in the 1860s. The Government erected a chain of straw huts along the route for the use of travellers, but there were no bridges. Major rivers were crossed at drifts, with small boats and ferrymen in attendance. Often wagons would have to be taken to pieces and reassembled on the other side. When the rivers came down in flood they could not be crossed for weeks at a time. In 1852 John Bird, Acting Surveyor-General, was asked by the Government to plan a road from Pietermaritzburg to Ladysmith, which had been founded three years previously.

   As late as 1876 the journey from Pietermaritzburg to the Free State border still took six to seven days, even though all the rivers had by then be bridged, except for the uThukela. If the traveller wished to branch out on either side of this winding ribbon, for some outlying farm, or for the mountains, he simply followed his nose, and depended on local farmers for hospitality.

   Transport, of course, was all by Cape Wagon, a sturdy, strongly built vehicle that served as coach and home for the traveller, often for many months at a time. The secret of a well-made wagon was its looseness. It had to be made in such a way that its various parts would respond and give to the multitude of bumps and strains it would be subjected to. The length was from 3.5 to 5.5 meters, and the breadth about 1.25 meters. It was usually made of stinkwood, and a top quality wagon could cost anything up to 100 pounds. In addition, a team of 12 to 14 oxen would be required, costing about 8 pounds a head, bringing the total cost to about 200 pounds, no mean sum in those days. The traveller John Shedden Dobie described wagon travel as “the jolliest and most independent style of travelling ever I have tried, a prolonged picnic”.

   But it was a lonely and empty land.

   Robert Ralfe, farming at Bergvliet, just beyond the Military Post at Bushmen’s River Drift – in the Escourt District – went for 14 years without seeing a single white woman!

   William Allerston, who had been offered a position as a constable at the newly established village of Ladysmith, at 4 pounds a month, arrived there at the end of 1849 with his wife and family to find only four houses of wattle and daub. There had been a fifth, but it had fallen down the day before he arrived. In order to obtain food supplies for the family he had periodically to walk 64 kilometers to Bushmen’s River Drift, bringing the provisions home on his back.

   When the Emmaus Mission Station was established in the Drakensberg in 1847, postal communications with Pietermaritzburg and Durban took place every 6 months.

    In May 1850 Reverend James Green rode up from Pietermaritzburg to beyond Harrismith to meet Bishop Gray, who was coming to Natal overland from the Cape. From the time he left the present town of Escourt to his return there, he did not see bread, vegetables, sugar, coffee or any meat but game.

   When Charles Barter, a prominent figure in early Natal days, made a similar trip the same year, he missed Ladysmith altogether, and went on into the Free State without ever finding it!

   If these were the conditions in the Midlands, north of Pietermaritzburg, what of the Drakensberg itself? A map of Natal, prepared in 1853, gives a good idea of what was known of the area in the 1850s. North of Pietermaritzburg only three rivers are named, the Mooi, the Klip, and the Buffalo? (On the coast no less than 66 are named!), while Weenen is placed on the Klip River instead of the Bushmen’s. The Drakensberg is simply shown a straight line, though there does appear to be a slight bend, unnamed, at what would be Giant’s Castle. Not a single peak is named. Another map, published in Holden’s History of the Colony of Natal, in 1855, is a little better. The height of the Drakensberg is given as 1220 to 1 524 meters above sea level. The actual average height is 3 048 meters. Well could Dr W.H. Bleek, writing in that same year, 1855, say “The recesses of the Quathlamba are practically unexplored.”

   It was far more than unknown. It was a place of superstitious dread. Many were quite convinced that it was the abode of magical dragons. Even so reputable a paper as the Bloemfontein Express reported in its issue of 26 April 1877 that an old farmer and his son had come back terrified from a trip into the Drakensberg, claiming to have actually seen the dragon, a fearsome monster with two wings and a forked tail, several hundred feet long, and flying very high. One cannot help wondering how many wayside taverns the two had visited on their way home!

   Actually no one knew what lay behind those enigmatic spires. There was a well-established rumour that the mythical unicorn was to be found there, a rumour referred to by Sir John Robinson in his book A Life-time in South Africa, published in 1900. Round about 1855 a Zulu man told a Natal Settler that he and five other Zulus had once climbed to the summit behind Mont-aux-Sources. They had gone a little distance in-land, when they found a remote and fairly extensive swamp, “of the extend of one day’s travelling”. There they found six large animals, about the size of a blesbok, dark brown in color, and each with a long, straight horn on its forehead. The animals were extremely ferocious and attacked immediately, killing five of the Zulus. The sixth only escaped by climbing a large rock. In February 1866, during the Basotho war, a strong column patrolled this plateau, and discovered the swamp, but there were no unicorns!

     A Mosotho in the service of Daniel Bezuidenhout, then living near Bethlehem, offered to show his employer a kind of animal which, from his description, must have been exactly the same animal as the ones described to Osborn. The Mosotho added that it was so fierce that it would attack its own shadow!

   The colonists of Natal were so convinced that there was something there that in 1860 they seriously considered organizing an expedition to hunt out the mythical unicorn. It was proposed that a Natal Unicorn Company, Ltd, should be floated, but it never came to anything, largely owing to the hostile attitude of Moshoeshoe. The area was not approachable from the Natal side, owing to a lack of knowledge of the passes. The only way up the plateau was through Witzieshoek and up the Namahadi Pass, and Moshoeshoe was more than ordinarily suspicious of the whole idea. In any case, as one of the members pointed out, what about the Bushmen lurking in the recesses of the Maluti’s, with their poisoned arrows! That seemed to put a final damper on the whole scheme, and the unicorns were left in peace!

    Who were the first white me actually to see the Drakensberg? Strangely enough, we can almost certainly answer that question. On 21 January 1593 the Santo Alberto, a large Portuguese vessel, richly loaded, set sail from Cochin for Portugal with 347 souls on board. Two months later, on 24 March 1593, she was wrecked between the Bashee River and the    Great Kei River. Sixty-two people were drowned, but the survivors, 125 Portuguese and 160 slaves, set out for Delagoa Bay (the present Maputo). Shipwrecks were frequent on this wild and inhospitable coast in those days. The usual procedure was for the survivors to trek overland, following the coast, and to head either for Delagoa Bay or the Cape. The great difficulty was always the broad river mouths to be crossed, and on this occasion the survivors, men and women, decided to strike further inland to avoid these crossings.

      It must have been one of the epic journeys of history – over more than 1 000 kilometer of wild, unmapped country. Many died by the way, but the survivors did eventually reach their destination, after a journey lasting three and a half months. They crossed the Upper uThukela, Upper emZimkulu, and the Upper emKhomazi. They must have passed through the Midlands of Natal and Zululand, more than 200 years before the Voortrekkers arrived there. On 2 May, when they must have been either near the Dargle or the Lotheni, they reported seeing, towering above them to the west, a great range of snow-covered mountains. This could have been no other than the Drakensberg.

   How close to the Drakensberg did they come? Did they, perhaps, pause a while in this pleasant land, and did some of the more adventurous souls go exploring, and did they perhaps penetrate the valleys of the Little Berg? Did they even climb one of the passes to the top? We do not know, and it does not greatly matter. It is sufficient that this mighty mountain chain had at last unveiled her beauty to the eyes of the white man.

   Then, as the mists close around the peaks on a summer’s day, so the mists of time close in about this lonely land. For more than two centuries all is darkness. But sometimes the mists part, and reveal for a brief moment some elusive peak or soaring pinnacle, only to close again and leave behind an unanswered question. And so, over the years, we catch an enigmatic, tantalizing glance at some lonely traveller, who appears for a moment and then is swallowed up again in darkness, the story of whose coming and going will remain forever untold.

  

  

  

The End.

Safe Hiking.

References and Acknowledgements

From the book – ‘BARRIER OF SPEARS’   –   R.O Spears

Photos:  © Willem Pelser

Compiled by:  Willem Pelser