Last week I was driving through the country here towards somewhere and I looked around. There was so much I could see and it was miles and miles. But on the hand it as not that far as everything is just super flat and the view just stops at the next tree line.
That is the difference between the flatlands here and the mountainlands that were in South Africa. Once standing on top of those hills the farsights in there were really just something else. There are corners, and every corner brings something else. These views were coming from the North side of the ‘Soetkraal Provincial Nature Reserve’ where the roads tend to get very 4x4 needed with a high clearance. Steep up and down and rocks to pass over. I loved taking the time for giving the views the space they deserve.
At a certain point I stopped at a little trailer which was also a coffee bar. There was this old guy running the bar and we started chatting. He had run the place for decades and even had a small campsite and cottages around there but those seemed to be empty. He had built up everything step by step with his own hands. We talked a bit as he pointed at pictures with him and his wife who had died not that long ago. He told me that life hadn’t been the same since and he didn’t have the joy of running it without her. ‘What is the point if I am stuck here all by myself’. We talked a bit about him selling the place and hitting the road. ‘But why do all of those things if it is also only just by myself’
It was sad and I really didn’t know what to say. There was so much grief on this man that we hung out for a bit in silence while having a coffee together. Later on after leaving his place the drive continued through the mountains. Around every corner of the hills it seemed like a part of his story was there. A road that he probably had driven already so many times in his life, but it had now lost its shine for him.
I turned down the music in the car and drove on through the hills over the gravel roads. The silence suited the situation a lot better. It was even more beautiful when you attach such impressive stories to those hills. I waited and watched again to see what life had there around the next corner.