A long walk

I live in a place where myth and legend rule. My neighbour is a witch doctor (literally, he is). I hear stories of tokolosi, or little people who live in the mountains and steal children and kill livestock. Often, as I sit in my little hut, drinking my coffee and checking facebook, I forget just how primal a world I live in. (Primal, does that work? I didn’t want to say primitive, because that’s not quite right).

The lodge has asked me to gather some information on the parks trails. With the addition of the fence (for the new wildlife) many of the trails have been altered and none of the trail markers are accurate anymore. This project requires me to walk every inch of every trail, ideally getting an accurate length but more importantly a reasonable time the trails can be walked in. Yesterday I walked some 14k (close to 9 miles, 8.7 for anyone who cares). This doesn’t count the walk to the trail heads and back.

I can assure you that the hikes where amazing. The park hosts the larges population of mature Chichi trees in Lesotho. Chichi trees are something to behold. It would be easy to miss them, as they look more like a shrub than a tree. Their branches reach out at all levels with chaotic twists and turns. The limbs themselves often look half formed, with odd knobs and strange cracks along their length. No beautiful symmetry here, no towering grace, just chaos.

I was strolling down along the river, following the lower trail, and I found myself surrounded by the burned out skeletons of chichi trees. It’s hard to explain the feeling of the area. All around me was past devastation. Like finding a ruined building deep in the woods that was long sense forgotten, your mind begins to imagine what might have happened. I began to imagine dragons scorching the country side, I envisioned giants in the hills hurling fire at one another. My imagination went wild even though I knew what had really happened.

This is the birthplace of myth, the home of legend.

It’s hard not to get lost in your own fantasies. The rocky rivers, the green slopes, the twisted trees. Each bend in the path could reveal a swimming hole, or scorched earth.

The upper trails are, at times, truly brutal. A path that leads from Ts’ehlanyane to Bokong Nature Reserve proves it. This path is 23k long. Bokong is up in the mountains, south of Ts’ehlanyane and north of Katse dam. I began walking the trail at 1pm, just after lunch, with the intention of “seeing how far I could get”. I imagined the trial weaving its way through the mountains. Finding small passes, hugging valleys, meandering lazily though the mountains.

I was wrong.

As it turns out, the way to get to Bokong is to go up and over the mountains. The trail simply went up. Not a vertical climb where you know what your getting into, where the end is in sight. No, the mountains are not that forgiving. Instead its that gradual, slow climb where you don’t fully notice it at first, but the strain builds on you, grows into a ache, and finally excruciating pain. Every bend was a nightmare of hope followed by despair, each switchback taunting in its cruel assent.

Did anyone know I have a bad knee? I didn’t. On my way up my right knee began to hurt terribly. I decided to turn back at 3:30pm. I had made it to the 4000 meter mark. That’s 4K by my math. The return 4k was excruciating. Every time I would bend my knee it was like someone stabbed me there. I think I need to get that checked out (and might as well do it now with free health care!).

The pain and all was worth it. The view, the peace, the quiet, all invigorating.

There is simply nothing like it in the world.