Category: Blog

We came upon it unexpectedly, as the sun was touching the treetops, this pool of sweet water, left behind by the little river when the drought and the heat stopped its flow and pushed it further and further back towards the Ruvuma. Over many millennia the pool had been hollowed deeper by bits of mud carried away on hooves and hides. Now it was a generous knee-deep deliverance from thirst and heat. Perhaps it hid below its surface secret little fissures and pebble beds that kept slowly bleeding into it, preventing it from also turning into a sun-baked crust...

It was close to noon and time for the midday break. A bush willow close by offered a generous pool of shade.  As I approached, I noticed a small chop mark on its trunk. The brown globules of gum that had seeped out of the wood were still soft on the inside. It was probably done a few days or a week ago. There were no tracks around the base, but the chop mark was unmistakably human made. It was typical of someone wanting to mark a route or a position – perhaps to a snare or a beehive...

A stone’s throw out of our lair of last night, and we came across this posting on African Bush fb. It was fresh, made in the early dark hours by a lone bull elephant. As you can see from the spoor, he was heading west (from left to right on the pic) and quite briskly. He might not have picked up our scent under the smoke from our fire, which we had kept going through the night, but he would certainly have seen the fire’s flickering glow and, being downwind and close, the great ears may even have detected...

My turn. Mud-milky and smelling of earth and animal dung, but sucked through thinly-parted lips in long, eager draughts. If one wanders into unknown stretches of wilderness in the African heat, the deadly spectre of dehydration hovers in every mirage. Your movement is absolutely governed by water – can you survive on the water you can realistically carry until you are likely to find more? Here’s an excerpt from Paths of the Tracker with a very real story: Henry didn’t seem to notice his sense of affront. “One of the most important things to remember for survival in the...

A dawn discussion about a big decision – in which direction shall we head today? We had more or less decided to explore the area a bit and we had made a rough “fly” camp. It was under a stand of young and taller Brachystegia that formed a reasonably good canopy to keep the dew off us and our equipment and would provide shade over the hot part of the days.  Around us, in all directions, lay many kilometres of unknown wilderness. We had some anecdotes about what might be going on around us from a small hunting party...

The bushveld savannah of Africa is shown on maps as vast uni-coloured blotches of yellow or green or brown or some other monochrome, with numbers inside them – 18, 21, 22… Reference tables on the sides explain that the colour blotches represent Woodland Savannah, undifferentiated or, Woodland Savannah, south-eastern areas and other such prosaic-sounding descriptions. But the animals and the bush people that live there know that the bush is infinitely more variable than what the uniform yellow or green or whatever might suggest. It can change within a few hundred meters from mopani shrubland to tall knobthorn and...

When you dare deep into the great wilderness, the familiar activities and undertakings and sensations of existence change. To prevail you now need to be acutely aware of different things, like your environment and your vehicle, and you need different kinds of skills – ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance – and luck. You have to make use of what you have with you, or can find around you; stitch them together in ways that will keep you going. Your vehicle with your equipment represents about the last of the familiar ploys, but one can take only a very small bit...

Once I get into the wilderness I like to dawdle; to take whatever direction the voices whisper. It is like a slow-motion ride on an extreme roller coaster – a slow climb, a breathless pause, a plunge through vast vistas; a slow linger on minute detail, sometimes pondering deep mysteries, at other times applying simple common sense, sometimes facing gigantic forces, then tiny vulnerabilities, sometimes mortal danger, then soothing tranquillity… But the voices speak in the subtle words of the veldt. Nowadays people go on tracking courses or such for a few weeks or longer and become “Field Guides,” believing...

You can listen to the voice recording, or read through the text below. Enjoy!   Unreachable for most humans, but gods roam here, and fairies, and the spirits of long-dead animals and trees, I like to believe. I stare back down the trail. Creeper weeds and the odd tuft of grass have invaded the wheel ruts. My tracks, visible in the sandy patches, are the only ones. Being alone here where everything has been pushed into silence and sky is to be exposed to impressions that totally consume the senses—to forces that, should they be unleashed, would be immensely...