Hoffman, Author at Hoffman van Zijl Wilderness Wanderer

The water invites a swim, but this is the African wilderness. We are wary. The mat of leaves around the edges is barely disturbed.

Beware!

December 8, 2019October 9, 2024Hoffman3 Comments

I stare down at the mirror-smooth surface of the pool with its eclectic decorations of fallen leaves. They could mean almost anything I want them to. The water is clear as polished glass, right down to the bottom. A few tadpoles cling to the edge like a row of suckling piglets. It is almost a choreographed picture of stillness and peace. Clean water that we don’t need to dig for, or that is not hoof-churned soup with bits of dung floating in it, is rare. The swathes of shade around it from trees growing verdant in the moisture, is...

The right front paw of a wild dog. Hoffman van Zijl Wilderness Wanderer.

Terror

December 1, 2019October 9, 2024Hoffman3 Comments

The right front paw of a wild dog. We found this single imprint in a sandy spot that was bare of vegetation. But we found more, when we looked around carefully – six, eight, maybe ten more sets. Their paws are soft, so their sign is easily missed… We had been wondering why the bush had been so strangely empty of medium-sized and smaller ungulates for something like the last two days – almost no zebra, no hartebeest, no impala, no kudu, no waterbuck, no wildebeest, no eland… The ones we did glimpse seemed unusually skittish. The wild dog...

The backpacks the men are carrying are loaded with supplies and a few other necessities for survival in the bush.

Ready for the Day’s Trek

November 24, 2019October 9, 2024Hoffman2 Comments

My four companions on this sojourn, ready for the day’s trek. “The day’s trek,” would be a meander in a general direction, say north, but easily deviated from to investigate bush phenomena we might notice, or to search for water, or to explore stories we might pick up from local bush people, and the like. On the right is Jacqui, whom I recruited as bush medium. He spoke a few words of English and a few of Fanagolo. Fanagolo is a pidgin language based on Zulu that developed on the South African gold mines as a kind of lingua...

The Bruegel Picture

November 17, 2019October 9, 2024Hoffman1 Comment

This week’s picture is like a Bruegel painting. It carries many stories, of wandering and of bush people and of an opportunistic Chefe du Posto, and a gentlemanly old chief and a rogue hippo in a far place; much too much to try and squeeze in here. But let me start with a few remarks about the picture itself. Maybe some of the other stories will emerge, each in its own time. It is like that with stories. Each one comes when its time and its place is right. The picture is of the living area of the dwelling...

Never venture from a known water source further than you can return with the water you have left.

Water Tales

November 11, 2019October 9, 2024HoffmanLeave a comment

You can listen to the voice recording below, or read through the story. Enjoy! It took two days of meandering tracks and then three days of hard bush bashing to reach the pan. By then I had about sixty litres of water left. If I did not find water here, I would have to return to my previous source when I was down to about forty litres, or I might not make it back. That would limit my stay at the pan to a maximum of four days. The pan was a huge calcareous flat some four hundred...

Wild Animals. Hoffman van Zijl Wilderness Wanderer.

Too close…

November 3, 2019October 8, 2024Hoffman2 Comments

You can read through the text below,or listen to the narrative. Enjoy! We could not see him yet, but we could hear the crack and thump of his browsing as he shouldered aside the seemingly impenetrable tangle of the thickets. He was close. So close that when he stopped, I could hear the grind of the great molars chewing through bundles of vegetation. A pinch of fine dust from between my feet told that the air was almost still, with an eddy now and then. We should have moved out of his way, but I could not resist the...

We try to follow bush paths to ease the going. The African wilderness is veined with them. Some have been made by animals, some by humans. Hoffman van Zijl Wilderness Wanderer.

Of Meat and Bush Paths

October 27, 2019June 29, 2024Hoffman2 Comments

You can read through the text below, or listen to the voice recording of the story. Enjoy! The night-long flaming and smoking of the reedbuck meat left it almost dry and a deep purple in colour. The men used palm leaves and strips of bark to truss it in tight bundles, which they will carry balanced on their heads. At the midday break they will probably cure it a bit more, so that it becomes almost black and dry. At breakfast and dinner they will shave off bits to have with their porridge. Not a scrap will go...

Meat!

October 21, 2019October 8, 2024HoffmanLeave a comment

I shot a young warthog in the grey light before sunrise. My companions strung it from a pole with strips of bark and we took turns in pairs through the day to carry it. It was hard work. It was a young boar and I had gutted it, but a warthog is a solid animal and the swing of the carcass from the pole gnaws at the shoulders and throws one off balance as one weaves through the bush. But there were no complaints; only smiles. It is a bit sad to kill an animal but as the sojourn...

Unremarkable Routine

October 13, 2019October 8, 2024Hoffman2 Comments

You can read through the text below, or listen to the voice narrative. Enjoy! Sometimes I feel like sharing the mundane of bush wandering; the parts that are not interesting or educational or dramatic, but part of the wilderness experience like the front door key is part of urban living. It is things like the careful checking of the vehicle at stops, the routine of finding a camp site, of preparing for the night, of having meals… The daily bush routine – which, in the African wilderness turns out to be is more of a framework than...

Relentless March

October 6, 2019October 7, 2024Hoffman1 Comment

You can listen to the voice narrative, or read through the text below. Enjoy! The young male lion’s skull lay forlorn on the edge of a hollow. It had once held water, but now it has dried to a desolation of cracked mud. Around, a calcific flat stretched away in scrub-mottled grey to a thin blur of trees on the horizon. It was a bitter picture. I looked around. Nowhere on the bleached surface could I see even a single bone from the rest of the skeleton. Had the scavengers felt awkward about desecrating the countenance of...