A Karoo Mystery

Last year, a friend told me about an interesting experience he had. He and a handful of other men attended a 5 day retreat with an industrial psychologist, deep into the Snow Mountains, somewhere between Graaff-Reinet and Nieu Bethesda, where they walked, did breathing practices, gentle stretching and held tea ceremonies.

“It sounds a bit strange,” Dawid de Wet replied to my sceptical eyebrow.

“But it had a wonderful calming effect on me. And made me pay attention to the little things around me.”
I looked at Dawid’s big hands and rough beard and tried to imagine this wild man at a tea ceremony. It was very difficult. But he and the industrial psychologist, Julie Robinson, are going to offer an experience like this again, for men, and then I have to come, Dawid told me.

“No, I have absolutely no need for such an affair. If one day I don’t know how to breathe anymore, you can put me down instead. I only drink tea when I’m very sick and I’m feeling quite fine at the moment,” I said to Dawid and inside I told myself: “This thing almost sounds like a weird little hippie sect”.

And now… now I’m sitting on a game viewing vehicle with four guys from Johannesburg and Julie herself. On our way, into the mountains, to what Julie calls an Inventure. At least I have an excuse for when I feel the weirdness makes me too uncomfortable; I’m just here to take pictures. We met in Graaff-Reinet this afternoon and immediately went to the Slater and Dutch leather shop to do leather work with the owner, MC van Rensburg. Everyone got the chance to make a small sling bag for themselves. The earthy smell of leather, the feeling of authenticity between my fingers, my hands forming something useful, made me wonder if I shouldn’t leave the alphabet to do more of such things. How many of us still know what our hands can do?

Between Graaff-Reinet and Nieu Bethesda, David McNaughton sends his Land Rover into the Sneeuberg’s chest. The veld track takes us to the very west side of the farm, Schoonberg. After good autumn rains, the Karoo is a soft green and blue. There are pools in hollows and flowers in the bushes and birds dancing overhead. From a wide plateau we can see Compassberg’s needle pointing to the skies. This is also where David stops so that we can walk the last few kilometres to camp. Down into the Gats River, through the water. The last light of the day drifts, following the stream to where it ripples past our tents where we are welcomed by Dawid, Anver Waterboer and a fire.

The location is incredibly beautiful. The fact that Dawid and Anver got everything here and spoil us with luxuries like proper beds, meals and a hot shower in the middle of nowhere is almost unbelievable.

The Karoo is the breath that gives life to Inventure.

And Julie: she showers us with gifts. From beautiful Basotho blankets, an interesting succulent to a personal handwritten letter and a special rock that she picked up for you in the Klein Karoo. The Karoo is the breath that gives life to Inventure. It was on this piece of earth where Julie became whole and healthy again a few years ago when her body and spirit seriously weakened. She knows about the healing powers here. That is why she wants to create a space where other people can also experience this and return home calmer, connected and more alive.

To make sure we hear the Karoo’s whispers between the rocks, kapokbos (wild rosemary) and twilight, we had to give Julie our mobile phones and watches in Graaff-Reinet. For the next few days, the calls of the Bokmakieries and Egyptian geese are the only ones we have to answer. The sun and shadows will tell whether the hour is important or not. As it should be.

The day starts with, “gentle movement and stretching”, as Julie calls it. Even though she is not a yoga teacher, this exercise feels pretty much like it to my inflexible muscles. I am not really into stretching. Not that I think yoga or similar activities are evil. It just seems a little unfamiliar to me. And when people start using all kinds of funny words as if they are preaching a faith and tell how it calms their minds like the leaves on trees, my skin crawls somewhat. But where I now stretch out with Julie and the other men like a happy dog ​​in the early morning sun, I feel calm and satisfied. My skin feels warm where the sun is stroking it and cold against the rock bank we lie on. Along with the gentle movements, Julie invites us to focus on our breathing. The breeze in my chest becomes cool and grateful like the air after late afternoon rain. Why are we so afraid of the things we don’t know?

Later in the morning Dawid guides us on a hike up the slopes along the Gats River. He knows the area very well as he and his wife, Karlien, run a tourism business in Graaff-Reinet and he regularly explores the area for routes. We tread in the footsteps of klipspringers (rock jumpers), aardvarks, baboons and jackal. We crawl through buck honeythorn tunnels and other thickets that have scratched the backs of lurking kudus at sunrise. Until we reach a waterfall. Yes, a waterfall. A beautiful, thundering waterfall in the Karoo. Dawid and I scramble down to swim in the holy water. As uncomfortable as a yoga mat makes me feel, that excited I get when nature is majestic and infinitely great around me. It’s good to feel small. To know you have a place in the incomprehensible universe, but to remember that I am only one single human.

It’s good to feel small. To know you have a place in the incomprehensible universe.

Everyone moves at their own pace, meandering all the way along the river, back to camp. The evening becomes cold under the bright Southern Cross. But our fire burns high and cozy. Anver and Dawid make a delicious dinner. The men talk about the walk and the swimming in fresh mountain water. These are things they have never done before. They want to bring their children to the Karoo. They realise how far removed they are from raw and true experiences with nature. And they now realise how much everyone needs it.

It is not the sun, but Julie, that wakes us up very early the next morning. Her session with us will happen on top of the mountain during sunrise. The climbing begins in the light of our headlamps. With each step, the heavy darkness around us thins more and more until the clouds above us burn pink and the mountains give off an orange glow. At the top a splendid view awaits us. To where Compassberg is embracing the first rays of the day. We sit on rocks that have seen the sun rise millions of times while Julie reads an extract about beauty and the creativity within us. But the dream I had about my father earlier in the night bothers me too much. I can’t think of one dream about my parents that made me get up calmly. Most of the memories of them are also nightmares. I swallow my daily antidepressant and a bunch of words pours out on paper:

Not a poem. Not unique. Not the first or last words on this. Just a feeling. A thought in a moment south of Compassberg. Because it was there and I gave it a chance to really exist and didn’t try to ignore it. If it means something, it’s good. If it’s done, it’s okay.

There may be a cold front hanging between the Snow Mountains, but Julie still lets us stand before a pool of the river. With deep and slow breaths through the nose we try to fool our brains about the circumstances and the absolute lack of heat. Deeper and deeper into the fridge water. Slow. Calm. It’s not as bad as you thought it would be. By the time only our heads are still sticking out, everything is normal and the Gats River feels like a swimming pool in January.

We can “choose how we spend our afternoon”, says Julie and she only brings us back together just before sunset for a conscious connected breathing session. Bring your Basotho blankets, she suggests. This way of breathing tends to lower our body temperature. I lay down on the yoga mat, somewhat against my will, in a sunspot on the rocks. These activities make me feel the most uncomfortable. Breathing in an intimate group in such a way that everyone can hear me feels very unnatural and I struggle.

“Soften your exhale,” says Julie.

I’m glad we’re lying on our backs, because I definitely don’t want to make eye contact with anyone at the moment.

“Release your exhale completely, let it all out,” says Julie.

Some of the men are letting it out. I cannot.

“Feel how the shadow of the mountain gently passes over you. Feel the last heat of the day. Feel the earth beneath you. The power and energy of this land. A land upon which people lived long before you.”

I feel it. And start letting out a little bit more.

“Let it go, softly, gently.”

Why is it so hard to let go? Is everything so tightly knotted, or have I not untied it yet? Why do my parents still bother me so much even though they are both gone? As a child I sometimes wished they would disappear somehow.

I see my father in the hospital bed. He became a ghost. We throw dirt and stones on his coffin in the field on his brother’s farm in the Free State.

I pick up my mother where she just took her last breath in the Garden Route. She is a skeleton in my arms and when I put her down on the ambulance’s trolley I am still unsure who she was.

I look down and there I am lying in the veld. Alone. An orphan. Exactly what I wanted to be. But now it makes me cry. Everything comes out and it is a flood that I cannot stop. Years of anger, sadness, shock, death and longing create waves through my ribs. It washes out on Karoo land. And finally I’m empty. A plain where nothing stirs.

It doesn’t necessarily make me feel better. Not at all lighter. I avoid the company of the group because I feel ashamed and don’t feel like talking about what happened. Julie quickly pops in to check on me. This way of breathing can often release trauma that we hold in our bodies, she explains. I never believed such things worked, I tell her.

“Be gentle with yourself and give your feelings space. And come sit with us when you’re ready. We miss you.”

Hearing a small circle of strangers care about you is wonderful encouragement, but it takes me until late the next morning to become part of the group again. Just to hear that we have to undertake another strange endeavour…creating land art.

“Walk and notice what catches your attention, what speaks to you. Listen to the earth and your insides,” is Julie’s guidance.
Dawid and I start walking up a beautiful ravine to perhaps stack two stones on top of each other somewhere. What else does one do?

But the veld starts talking to something inside me and I start to tell what led to yesterday’s breaking point on a sweet thorn branch. By the end, I realise that everything that happened to me, made me who I am. I can be grateful and even happy about that. That’s why I hang a twig from a Bitter Karoo bush at the bottom of my story. Despite its name, it blooms bright yellow and firmly holds the soil around it.

I feel light. I feel anchored. But I have no idea how I’m going to explain to people how this happened. It will remain the strange and wonderful mystery of an Inventure in the Karoo. You have to be there yourself to understand.