All things are possible

(Including our first guest contribution)

The wild animals honour me,

the jackals and the owls,

because I provide water in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland,

to give drink to My people, My chosen. ~ Isaiah 43:20

(Today's chapter is based on a life experience, as written by a very dear and humble friend. Someone who as a sailor, boldly sailed the high seas, as a father and husband crossed stormy waters, but as a child of God grows more beautiful each day. I have worked his special story (the section in italic font) into "our" story, as background on "Laura", our main character).

The place where you are born is the back-drop for almost all first impressions. Where you take your first uncertain steps, graze your shins and bury your hands into warm soil for the first time. Your horison can be a narrow one with small visions. Where one so easily grows confident in your own abilities, certain that your destiny can be shaped by your own choices and decisions. Being exposed to nature in all it's wide and raw beauty, both cruel and gentle, shapes a different view. You witness how, with single-minded accuracy, a predator ends the life of it's pray. How the fearsome force of a single bolt of lightning, can cleave a tree from top to bottom without the touch of a hand. Tempests, droughts, the passing of seasons, all so close, so real. The appearance of new life, tumbling wet, slippery and vulnerable from it's mother. Staggering to it's feet minutes after birth. The struggle to survive, the rebirth of dry and depleted veld after the rains. And knowing with an unquestioning certainty - it all simply abides by the voice of it's Creator, who does not miss a single sparrow's fall.

I have known "small" men with large ambitions, but fickle hearts. My father was not one of them. He was humble, but had the heart of a lion. He knew how to steward rather than to dominate, to cherish that which was dear to him - and I never doubted that I was part of it. The way he said my name as if it was a pearl of great value: "Laura, my lovely", he called me. And then I would be swung high and held against his chest, smelling of tobacco, sweat and dust.

~ I grew up on a cattle farm known as "Red Tiger Ranch" in the Swaziland low veld. Named after the vast expanses of "rooi gras" (red grass) and the leopard who roamed there. It was a beautiful area of pristine bush. My father farmed beef cattle and with the sweet veld that abounded, they grew fat and flourished. The whole area was covered with indigenous trees and bush. Knob thorn, marula, kiaat, red ivory, many types of combretum, umtambotie, iron wood, wild fig and wild olive. The area had been hunted for many years, but some wild life was preserved. We were able to supplement our diet by shooting for the pot - impala, koedoe, bushbuck, duiker, steenbuck and reedbuck. There were also a host of smaller animals, birds and insects. It was a naturalist’s, but also a child's paradise. My paradise.

Occasionally we would see leopard spoor in the river sand and on two occasions, I well remember the thrill of seeing lion spoor in the ‘Ingwenyana’ river at one of the drifts. The farm was bordered by the ‘Mzimpofu’ river to the West and divided into two almost equal portions by the ‘Ingwenyana’ river running from the North West to the South East sections of the farm. Both rivers were sand where the water flowed about eight feet below the sand surface. Only during heavy rains did a flash flood occur and then a wall of water, collected in the catchment up stream, would come thundering unexpectedly down over the sand.

I was absolutely infatuated by this land, and returning to school after a holiday was a time of mourning.

As a small girl I used to pray and one of my prayers was a very simple one: ”Dear God please let our farm become a game reserve one day. Amen!” This prayer became more sophisticated as I grew older. The prayer was prayed regularly and continued well into my thirties. At the time my own faith left much to be desired, and I did not really see how God could oblige. None the less, the prayers continued, even if I was never quite sure if anything would actually come of it.

Then one day, I received a phone call from my father. Dad had given a portion of the farm to me when we first acquired it. But now he gave me the unwelcome news that he had found a buyer for the farm, and that he needed to sell it. The question was: "Would I sign away my portion"! Dumbfounded I asked who the buyer was. He told me that it was a well known Swaziland conservationist... This man was apparently buying up land in the area to establish a rehabilitation reserve for endangered wild life. My heart was so sore and I felt deeply disappointed. But I realised that my Dad needed to sell, and was amazed at who actually wanted to buy the farm and for what reason! So - I agreed...

Our farm became part of a huge reserve call ‘Mkhaya’ after the knob thorn trees, which grow so prolifically there. It is a sanctuary for elephant, black and white rhino as well as roan, sable and suni antelope. There are only a few predators such as leopards, hyenas, jackals, and some of the smaller cats. Impala, as well as the other game which used to thrive there, are now plentiful and much more approachable. The ruins of our old farm stead where our voices still echo, stand on the rocky cliff overlooking the ‘Mzimpofu’ river. The reserve which I so fervently prayed for had become well established and it’s future was - hopefully - secure.

Looking back, I was reminded of Jesus saying to his disciples: “Ask and it shall be given you, knock and the door will be opened.” After having persisted with my simple prayer for many decades, I came to realise that through prayer, and God’s timely intervention - anything was possible. ~

But then my son was born. As I looked down on his wrinkled purply-red form for the first time, this certainty was shaken. How was this fragile being to survive? The prolonged birth had tapped my strength, and I felt weak, both from exhaustion and the overwhelming love for the child in my arms.

I looked around me for some re-assurance. Something solid, tangible, which I could grip and dig my nails into until it hurt. The midwife was smiling serenely. The pervasive, slightly coppery smell of blood, afterbirth, mown hay and dampness hung in the air. Two tiny hands reached out, grabbed my hand with an instinctive possessiveness. But the hand I reached for, was not there...

The fields are jubilant

Let the fields be jubilant and everything in them,

Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy ~ Psalm 96:12

With the setting sun etching our shapes in amber lines and curves, I reach up and pluck a yellow plum from the branch above my head. I place it in the small hand held out to me. I am defenceless against the the fierce and tender love for the child at my side. This boy with his wispy halo of flaxen hair, framing a delicate face, from which eyes the colour of an Autumn sky, sparkle with unclouded vivacity. My eyes were once the same clear blue, but time has marked them with melancholy, hidden under heavy eyelids. The lines around them attesting more to bitterness than laughter. The late afternoon is balmy, the heat of the day trapped along with the heady scent of ripe fruit surrounding us. A clumsy puppy of indeterminable breed is stalking a sacred Ibis - striding undaunted and out of reach. I have passed the flair and boldness of youth, but I no longer care for the fickleness of what is merely skin-deep. Which never brought me more than brief periods of prideful contentment and more hapless confessions of love, than I ever cared for. My hair, once a cascade of gold down my back, is now pulled into faded fawn at the nape of my neck. My feet are calloused and often bare, since I prefer it that way now. My hands bear the marks of exposure to sun and soil. The skin on my forearms, once creamy and soft, now freckled and browned.

From where I stand, the neat rows of an orchard draw your eyes towards a squat stone cottage, set in an alcove of Stinkwood and Camphor trees. It is a peaceful setting, although the stillness around the house with it's closed shutters and paint flaking from the front door, gives one almost the sense that it may not be occupied. But the garden tap has a relatively new hose attached to it, moisture oozing into quivering tears from the place where the spout and the pipe meet. Runners of wild strawberries have grown from the place where the drops collect - like veins of gossip, spreading unchecked. The last light of dusk is kind to the old place, distracting from the obvious neglect. Rust-holes in the gutters, the remains of an old BSA Spitfire motorcycle, crumpled against the side-wall, a dog kennel with a caved in gypsum roof. A scraggly clambering rose clings to the wooden trellis arched over the door. There is a puddle around it's trunk, where the dog's water bowl is emptied each day. The first fragile buds are starting to form, tight, secret little fists, defiant of the decay around them.

Here among the trees, exuding abundance and life, with the mountains standing sentinel behind us and the sun working it's alchemy on the landscape, time slows and draws around me in one exquisite moment of wholeness. With the rush of the river nearby, the child at my side so vital and dear, a sweetness settles over me. I long to surrender to it, to imagine that what lies beyond this moment, has no consequence...

Solitude has never held a threat for me. It is the memories that enter the solitude that eat away at my resolve, like water dripping on a stone. One agonising drop at a time. Wearing away at the hard surface, until the stone yields and curves inwards. Softened, but also diminished. Waking with the waxing moon pouring quicksilver streaks over the sheets. And the slow realisation that the room is still, so still. The night sky which used to glow with such promise, a cold vast dome.

We live a good life, this child and I. Uncomplicated, devoid of pressures and expectations. We are content in each other - too content. We have not known hunger, our surroundings are awe-inspiring, the air pristine. The boy longs for no more. He was born here. To him the craggy crevices of the mountains, are the markings of a giant beast at rest. A gentle giant, which may stir one day and walk the earth with great careful strides. To him the cool forest whispers secrets and lullabies. The brooks and streams babble in a language that he understands. There is always something to amuse him, some new creature or critter to hold his rapture for a while. But every so often, I catch his eyes searching, staring quizzically at an empty chair or listening for something, someone, with his head tilted. There will come a day, when he will ask, and the question throbs against my temples. How will I answer, how will I explain...?