Branded Blog

On Sunday, the last day, after the talking, after the processioning, after the burying,  the barefoot man and I took to the mountain. Phoebe-dog came too. It is our meditation, that mountain, our church.

We slowly climbed up the rocky path that snakes up the front face of the mountain, and through the narrow tree-shrouded gorge and steep, densely  grown incline of Silverstream.

We traversed across the cairned Ledges route at the base of the cliffs that tops out on the Table, and round to the exposed little climb on the Newlands side of the mountain.

And just when it started to feel endless we were suddenly up & out onto the bouldered wetland of the front Table below McClear’s beacon, and in the sunshine again.

We meandered all the way back across the top edge of the Table, while the clouds came and went and the city lay below us, much quieter than usual.

It occurred to me on the way up that if there was ever going to be a monument that might catch even a little of the immensity of the old man – the (grand)father of this little nation – this hunk of soulful rock might be it.

Sitting here near the southern edge of our country, our continent, it stays still while the world swirls around it. It watches as those of less fortitude are swept away from its side and eroded into nothingness. It watches and waits. It never wavers from the solid foundation of what it knows to be true and right.

And it sees much further than we can. Than we sometimes choose to.

It can see even when we are looking down at the dirt as we scuffle at its feet. It’s a reminder that there are still things worth seeing out there, worth doing & worth striving for.

There are many trails up that rock, but sometimes even when you know there is a trail and you are trying to follow it, you look around you and you see nothing but wildness. You feel so small, so lost, that it’s hard to recall why you started this hard journey upwards in the first place. You start to forget that it gets tougher the closer you get to the top. But the top is always there, reminding you that you’re not so lost after all.

The mountain knows where you are, and if you carry on, one cairn to the next, one boulder to the next,  then you’ll eventually round that final corner too. And you’ll suddenly find you can see just as far as he could, maybe even further, for now you get to stand on those giant shoulders of rock, and maybe carry on where they left off.

I will think of him everytime I step on the mountain now, and I will be grateful to have lived in his time and to know that greatness is still possible in this world, that bravery still exists and that love wins out in the end.