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THROUGH THE PROTEA
AND INTO THE CLOUDS
I’m no botanist.
Actually, I’m barely qualified to mow the lawn. If you sent me into the garden to weed I’d be just as likely to yank up a rare heirloom bulb than to pull up a dirty dandelion. So yesterday, when I chose to hike in the mountains to look at flowers, I surprised even myself.
But these are no ordinary flowers, these Protea. In fact to use the word “flower” to describe the Protea seems patently unjust. Flower is to Protea as house cat is to leopard, as guppy is to grouper. They are blooming now, as the oaks redden and shed their south of the equator leaves on the green South African lawns. An autumn Protea forest explodes presently on the sides of the mountains, their buds perched on tall muscular bushes that are often overhead. To hike through them gives one a slightly prehistoric feeling. The trail has been left purposely indistinct, free from the machete hack or the jaws of a lopper. The hiker must push his or her way through, reaching out to open a way among the blossoms and the leathery sage colored
BEARDED PROTEA
There are many kinds of "bearded proteas," of which this is only one.leaves like one might part a heavy curtain. The blooms themselves are big enough to fondle and stroke. They have, as my wife Kristen says, the feel of a puppy’s ear.
So it is this, and the promise of a long hike in the mountains that rise up all around us, that moves me to pull on my boots and stride off on the Panorama Trail in the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve here in Stellenbosch. Within 100 meters two things are immediately evident: the steepness of the trail and the variety of the Protea. I am as unfamiliar with the trail as I am with the Protea, but I do have a topographic map. I am also confident, because of my rudimentary knowledge of physics, that what goes up must come down. As far as the Protea, I am unequipped to identify a single one. But to the botanically challenged this is hardly an issue. Oh, I have seen them before, in manicured gardens. However, in relative terms, this is like viewing an elephant behind the bars of a zoo. Now I am standing amidst a herd, and there is not a fence in sight.
A wild variety of
buds and blossoms surround me, in various states of development. Some are closed tightly like huge nuts, the outer covering layered geometrically in beautiful patterns. Others are just beginning to burst open, revealing dizzying spirals of folded flower parts waiting to unfold. Still others show indigo-feathered tips at the end of white “petals.” Some varieties are completely exploded like the frozen yellow moment of a fireworks display. Sugarbush birds flutter here and there, alighting on the big blossoms at the top of the bushes. The sugarbush have elaborate tail feathers that wave in the breeze like the plume on Cyrano de Bergerac’s hat.
It’s the spiral within some of these flowers that I find most amazing, this moment of potency and promise holding itself in such a remarkable embrace. They follow a very ordered and complicated sequence that I have read reflects the numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence. This is, no doubt, a very esoteric bit of knowledge to list here. However, I only mention this because when I read it I thought immediately of the Fire Chief (who may read this), the only person I know that has a reference section in his living room. Funny how the
FIBONACCI FROZEN IN TIME
The spiral of an early emerging Protea. mind works.
Another thing I have learned is that in many cases what I am seeing here are not single Protea flowers, but rather flowerheads that contain multiple flowers. This is not surprising given their size. They are like muscular vehicles for the masses.
I am climbing up the southern facing wall of the valley, still in morning shadow. All the plant life is yet wet with yesterday’s rain. Soon I am as well. Soaked. There are white clouds capping the peaks above me. Across the valley the sky is electric blue, the sandstone and granite mountains brightly lit and rising out of the greenness below. A waterfall plunges. In the foreground, thousands of Proteas.
I climb and climb and climb. I am not sure if I will complete the entire loop of the Panorama Trail, all 17 kilometers. Perhaps I will I simply climb and turn back. But as I look across the valley I see what seems to be the clay colored thread of the returning trail. It is brightly lit and looks warmly comforting from this point of shadow and soggy pants. I am now at a point above the Protea line, where the
SPIRAL UNFOLDNG
Sugarbush Protea about halfway there silvery granite begins to emerge from the green shrub. The trail has now leveled off and I am hiking a contour line high above the valley floor. I can envision the trail wrapping around the inner wall of the valley then descending. I look at the map. It all looks flat. How much higher could I possibly go? How much higher indeed.
I cross a number of clefts in the valley wall where water runs and a few lonely trees have taken purchase. I notice that I am now higher than the top of the waterfall across the valley. Still in shadow I look up and see the clouds tickling the peaks above me. The wind blows. I don my jacket and check my watch. Push on. No Protea up here. Soon it will be downhill.
The trail suddenly jacks uphill and switches back and forth. I see that indeed it is not going to continue merrily level as I had hoped but has plans of its own. Again I check the map and look closely at the contour lines but cannot make them out clearly. Hmmm. I’ll definitely go that far, I say, looking up at a
saddle, the spot where the trail must certainly begin to turn away from the sky. The clouds are closing in above me. Far below, the valley floor is lit brilliantly green. I climb another series of switchbacks and arrive at the envisioned saddle, Bergrivier Nek, where I stand atop a divide that separates the heads of two magnificent valleys. The Berg River shimmers below and disappears into the east, the Eerste River into the west. Impossibly, the trail rises again into a jumble of rocks and shrub. Almost at eye level behind me, just above the trail I have just climbed, wisps of cloud blow up and condense into the large grey mass that caps Banghoek Peak. A fleeting thought passes through my mind: “Should I turn around?” The wind is strong and cool. I eat a banana, toss the peel over the edge for the baboons, and climb on.
About ten minutes up from the saddle, as I step from rock to rock on this granite stairway, the air suddenly darkens and cools. It’s as if a gauzy blanket has been tossed over me. I look up and see a vaporous cloud spilling over the top of
FROM BERGRIVIER NEK
Looking northeast down at the Berg River the mountain that I am ascending. It is like a living being, tendrils of smoke twirling at its edges, engulfing me. “Don’t panic,” I say to myself, “Don’t panic, you can still see the trail.” As I say this I am recalling the stories of the mists in Ireland swallowing hillwalkers whole, of hikers stepping blindly off cliffs in zero visibility. But it’s true, I can still easily see the trail, so I turn and go back, trying to stay calm. Within a few hundred meters the air clears and the green valley floor reappears.
So I rest again at Bergrivier Nek, catch my breath, and the air brightens. I look around, utter a confident “Fuck It!” and carry on uphill. This time there is no enveloping cloud, just amazing wisps pouring up the sidewall of the mountain driven by a blustery wind. Finally, after a mildly hair-raising section of the trail that skirts the headwall of the valley, it levels off atop a long section of what appears to be wetland. At least my sloshy boots say it is so. Here the cloud cover literally brushes the top of my head, while shafts of afternoon sunlight turn the
HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
Beginning the descent of Kurktrekkernek with the Eerste River below landscape below a jewel green. Then, at last, the trail begins to drop and I enter Kurktrekkernek ("corkscrew saddle").
It is not long before the higher altitude Proteas reappear. Again some are holding themselves in a tight shy embrace, while others have burst open like magnificent birthday poppers. It is also not long before my legs begin to shout.
On this side of the valley the trail drops almost precipitously at times. At one point it follows a drainage, and is more like a kilometer-long set of stairs built buy a mad stone mason, than a trail for sane hikers. It is precisely at this point that my legs began to seriously gelatinize and I wonder if a helicopter could actually find me. Is there cell phone service in here? How long do they wait before launching search and rescue? I did get a hiking permit (good thing) but I did go hiking alone (bad thing). My quads almost give out at certain points where I “step” down impossibly long sections of stairway. Suddenly, I am longing for a bit of uphill, just something to take the burn out of my legs. But I asked for this didn’t
CLOSED BUD PROTEA
Closed, but ready to burst. I. Just a few short hours ago I was begging for the trail to turn. Be careful what you wish for.
I pass below the two waterfalls that I had spied from the other side of the valley earlier in the day, rock hopping across noisy creeks. I manage to stay upright. This is no small accomplishment. Bit by bit I am again engulfed by the head high bush. I am whimpering now, my legs but pudding, my mind in no mood to stop and admire the flowers. The trail slowly evens out, mercifully, gently falling while following the Eerste River. The Eerste, after the recent rains, is now loudly proclaiming is river-ness.
The trail turns from rock to gravel to sand and soon I am at the trailhead, stepping wobbly-legged onto the gravel road. The sun is low in the sky now, just peeking below the clouds. Here on the valley floor the wind is calm. I look up into the mountains, at The Twins, Virgin Peak, Banghoek Peak and Guardian Peak. They wrap around me like walls of an enormous castle and poke up into the clouds.
The Protea are as they were this morning, thousands of them in various states of becoming. I vow to learn their names so that if I meet them again in the future I can at least address them properly.
It’s the least I can do.
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james wardle
non-member comment
Protea walk in mountains
Real cool walking up the mountains and viewing all the proteas, I grow them all around my house in California and a fantastic plant.