[Note: I am now, in fact, back in the U.K. However, I will still be finishing my blog over the next week. Hopefully revisiting all my memories will give me and my audience a better sense of closure.]
Saturday 4th September, 2010
There is a faint rustle and a flash of movement at the edge of my vision. I freeze - a bird has just hopped onto a branch not two metres away. I am ten metres above the forest floor and I'm in the birds' realm now. As I stay still, more and more become visible. The one I fix my eyes on is a tiny fellow a metre on my right, with a bold black stripe across his plumage. He shows me his profile and then bounces away along a creeper, completely oblivious of the human impostor watching him go.
This is the Dlinza forest, which quietly dominates Eshowe, enveloping its Main Street in a green horseshoe. I'm standing on the forest's Aerial Boardwalk, a 125 metre walk through the forest's canopy. The Boardwalk is unquestionably one of Eshowe's main tourist attractions, but somehow I have lived here for three weeks without visiting.
To enter the Boardwalk it is first necessary to traverse the small gift shop, education centre and restaurant, and fend off an eager guide who wants to show you around the forest. At first, the wooden beams are laid out just one or two feet above the forest floor, weaving among the trees. Then the hillside rapidly drops away, but the Boardwalk continues, uncompromisingly horizontal, supported by a mighty wooden scaffolding.
This Boardwalk is a refreshing example of the positive impact humans can have on nature. I can appreciate this more now because I have seen the evidence of how little respect South Africans generally pay to their landscape. I have become resigned to the litter strewn beside the roads. At first I was surprised when Nosipho, one of my Learning Leaders, told me how much she resented the beautiful hills and picturesque round huts in which she has grown up. 'I hate this place,' she said, with quiet vehemence. But I should not have been surprised, this rural area for her representing her poverty and limited opportunity.
However, here in the Dlinza forest things are different. Nature is protected and respected here. The story goes that the Bishop of Eshowe during the 1950's would come to a certain clearing, sit on his favourite vine and write his sermons. Every couple of years the children of Eshowe still come to the 'Bishop's Seat' clearing to perform their nativity play. To a large extent, the humans have resisted any unnecessary tinkering with the forest. They have added a few bins and benches at strategic intervals; the paths and roads through the forest are unsurfaced but labelled with helpful arrows. Informative signs are attached at eye-level to different trees, giving the name of the tree in Zulu, Latin, English and Afrikaans, along with the characteristic features of its bark, branches, leaves and fruit, and for which birds, butterflies, monkeys and wild pigs it provides refuge and sustenance. These signs are liberally sprinkled with delightful and impenetrable adjectives such as 'scarp' and 'latex' and 'fluted'. A friendly, personal touch is given by the name of the sponsor at the end: 'Nico & Elsa' or 'Eshowe Primary School'. They enhance your educational experience of the forest by gently highlighting your ignorance.
It is odd how our sense of perspective shifts according to our environment. I often forgot I was ten metres above the ground - it felt so natural to be at canopy-level, and it was only when I looked right down a trunk that I was reminded of my elevated height. Similarly, while I was wandering along the floor trails, I'd be so absorbed by the ground-level activity that I would forget to look up and admire the canopy far above. Looking up from the floor or down from the Boardwalk both produced a sort of vertigo.
My perception also changed according to whether or not I was wielding my camera. While I was busy framing shots I could only appreciate the forest on an intellectual level. My brain only shut up when I strapped my camera back into its shoulder bag, climbed down from my head in the clouds and opened my senses.
There is something distinctive about the flavour of the light in a forest. Bright flashes of sun continually alternate with dark, green fluttering leaf-shadows. It is only when I emerged above the canopy on top of the twenty-metre tall tower at the end of the Boardwalk that the sun got a clear shot at me, and feeling its fierce heat I realised just how much protection the forest provides.
Next, I opened my ears. After so long listening only to my own thoughts, the contrast of the quiet forest was very pleasant. The background traffic noise was audible even here, but so muffled it became a peaceful bass rumble. The tenor, alto and soprano were provided by the hidden choir of birds. The noise is so beautiful I don't know why we ever block it out.
Relaxing even more, I descended another layer away from my talkative brain and reached the sense of touch. On the unkempt forest trail, trees could lean right across and brush their leaves against my skin. I was brought up short when my face met a spider web woven from one side of the path to the other. I got a shock at the top of that tower when I placed my hands on a thick branch next to me and could feel the whole thing swaying noticeably in the wind.
Of course, I was generally wary of caressing the bark because every single tree seemed to have its own column of ants marching up and down it. The visible animals in the forest are not the big African mammals which tourists have been taught to expect. This is the place of the birds and the insects. I am the only human here and I feel a deep sense of satisfaction when I switch roles with the wildlife and become the observer, while they are unaware of my presence.
But I can't finish this post without saying something about the trees. I think most of the attributes of the Dlinza forest apply equally to any forest in the U.K., apart from the trees. These South African trees are more gnarled and knobbly, more lumpy and bumpy, more hairy, and overall just much more colossal than any British trees. On some of the trees the bark looks like it is boiling. The bases have to be buttressed with swelling roots to support the huge trunks. I feel like I've wandered onto a 'Lord of the Rings' film set.
My favourite things, though, are the creepers. They're everywhere, twirling and looping between branches or winding around trunks. Up close you can see that they're made of thin strands of strong, yet flexible, wood which have somehow plaited themselves together. I can just imagine swinging on one and yelling my heart out like Tarzan.
After walking the Boardwalk and the 'Nkoko' forest trail, I sit for a long while in the 'Bishop's Seat' clearing. I draw the Mind Map for this blog post and then write a letter, benefiting from the silence and sense of creativity the Bishop also found here. As the sun starts going down I decide it's time to get home. Feeling half like an enlightened Buddhist monk and half like an intrepid explorer, I set off back towards the hotel.
