Mbombela - Sometimes others say it best. Like “bushboundgirl” on her website when she introduces a favourite poem of hers, and of mine.
She writes: “This poem makes my heart ache, but articulates many things I have felt – and I’m sure you have too – but haven’t been able to put into words.” The poem she’s referring to is Wilderness, by Ian McCallum.
It reads: Have we forgotten that wilderness is not a place, but a pattern of soul where every tree, every bird and beast is a soul maker … Have we forgotten that wilderness is not a place, but a season and that we are in its final hour?
Dr McCallum – the former Springbok rugby player, medical doctor, psychiatrist and author – wrote the poem for Dr Ian Player, internationally recognised for his work as a conservationist and naturalist. He he ranks among the great visionaries of the wild.
With the words of McCallum’s poem in our hearts, and Players’ achievements on our minds, we set forth to immerse ourselves in the wilderness too. Our two destinations lay within the Greater Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga but on private, less busy lands.
First was the nDzuti Safari Camp in the Klaserie Game Reserve, next to the Timbavati Game Reserve – a small, affordable lodge with just four double suites. And next was the Tintswalo Safari Camp on the Private Manyeleti Game Reserve concession, an hour’s drive to the north – a magnificent five-star lodge, luxury in every conceivable way.
But while the two lodges differed vastly in price, they shared key characteristics.
First, neither are part of the Kruger National Park. But since the game fences were dismantled to unite state and private territories, there is free flow of game within the banner of the Greater Kruger National Park. Animals are free to come and go, following ancient routes between breeding and feeding grounds.
But while game flows freely, people may not. And so the private Klaserie reserve is exactly that, private – but with no boundaries between their concession and the rest of the Timbavati and Greater Kruger Park’s vast block of wilderness. In turn, Tintswalo’s concession on the Manyeleti reserve affords guests equally traffic-free stillness.
“Each of these areas is renowned in their own right for excellent safari and wildlife experiences and there is almost no other area like it left in South Africa. Of the entire 22 000 hectares that comprises this luxury lodge, there is only one other concession owner on the property,” the reserve guide explained.
Perhaps even more favourably, rangers at both reserves appear to understand, deeply, the meaning of McCallum’s words. In Tintswalo ranger Darren Roberts-York’s words: “The bush is a book. It’s my job to read it for you.” The rangers’ love of nature was perhaps epitomised by two stories, the first by nDzuti guide “AK”, about the healing properties, for sinusitis, of smouldering elephant dung. For humans are part of that too, one must understand.
And then, from Darren at Tintswalo, the story of two birds, the sand grouse and the honey guide.
“The honeyguide: an old legend of the bush, the honeyguide will draw other animals to a beehive by using a call that sounds like a matchbox being shaken. The old bush story goes that honey badgers will follow the bird, and decimate the bee colony, but always leave a small piece for the honeyguide to eat.”
Then there’s the sandgrouse, which has water absorbing feathers on its belly. A sandgrouse nest is a small scraping on the ground, and as such the eggs will often get very hot. So by absorbing water through their belly feathers, they can return to the nest and cool the eggs down with the recently collected water.
In the stillness – both in the bush in these two reserves, and by the stillness in the hearts of these nature-loving hosts – the real gift was not the “sightings”, for which the bush is famed, but the “wilderness” around them. - Weekend Argus