A tribute to Mike

On the 17^th of January my uncle, Mike Mamacos, died. He was in his late eighties and had lived out the last 10 or more years of his life as something of a hermit in his beautiful, simple dwelling, deep in the Du Toits Kloof mountains, that has no electricity or communication connections with the outside world. Although a loner, he was also a quiet but welcoming host to visitors. In his day, Mike was one of the best rock climbers in the world. At a memorial gathering held at the mountain club I paid tribute to this unusual man. Composing what I wanted to say was a valuable, meaning-making process of realising and appreciating what his influence means for me:

Things that went growl in the night

A kind-of sequel to a previous post: Things that go growl in the night
 

There is something satisfactory in returning to a wild place that you know well, a place beyond your everyday life, yet that is familiar because it holds a piece of your own history. If you are drawn back to such places, for whatever reasons, you may find that the combination of their wildness, their beauty and their familiarity invites you both backwards and forwards into your life in a mix that is compelling.

Yellowwood is such a place for me, a place that is within the geographical proximity of my everyday experience and yet far beyond it. Today the higher ground, everything above the foot slopes, is hidden in a cloud that has been stripped away from the plains over which I drove this morning, but still shrouds these mountains.

Witness to an eclipse

This article was written for the September issue of SA Mountain Magazine.

The Cederberg has the best climbing in the world. I don't know this because I've compared climbing destinations around the world. I know it because I've climbed in the Cederberg. That is enough. It is hard to imagine having a better friend than your best friend. Climbers are not objective route quality measuring devices. We are human and part of what I love about climbing is that it engages so much of my humanity. However beautiful the rock and the moves on a route, our experience of climbing it is about much more than just that.

On the day my father died

I am driving towards the small city of Port Elizabeth in the winter darkness. The eastern horizon, dead ahead, gradually defines itself in increasingly lighter tones of orange, outlined between the dark earth and sky. There are raindrops on the windscreen. The new glasses I am wearing define the world around me more sharply. Everything is slightly more beautiful.

This is what I am thinking: The actual world beyond the windscreen pays scant attention to the models we use to understand it, whether they are models that attempt to attribute value ratings to agricultural land, or religious models that attempt to understand the mystery of human existence. I think we believe too much in the models. But of course if we don't, we set ourselves adrift in a spinning world. And that can be uncomfortable.

Farewell to Ernie

On Wednesday 3rd July a crowd of family and friends gathered to bid farewell to my dad, Ernie. We were at the Llandudno Lifesaving Club on the beach in Llandudno, where my dad had lived for more than 50 years. Ernie died on Friday 28 June, aged 80, after a gradual deterioration compounded by his spinal injury, from a mountain biking accident, and the subsequent 15 years he spent in a wheelchair. This is what I and others said at the gathering:

Workers Day

I walked home along the Jonkershoek Road after we spent the evening together. There were no cars on the road. It was beautiful and cold and crisp. My down jacket was puffed around me and my beanie pulled low, so the cold against my face and nose, was pleasing rather than a discomfort. I walked slowly and looked at the stars and thought. I was happy to be walking rather than driving. Like so much about my life, it felt like a privilege, the silence, the darkness, the space, the stars wide overhead. I mulled over what I had said about myself. I thought about what it meant. When we talked together, I struggled to think of anything, really, to say about my life. Yes, it is good. But you know that.

New year greetings