The insects chased me out of the Camdeboo National Park campsite after just one night. There were so many of them and they were an organised unit. They sounded like rain on my tent roof, and like the rain they eventually seeped their way through into my tent and formed a film of insects that was Oscar-worthy over my laptop screen. I couldn’t blog and some of them were mosquitoes, so I didn’t sleep much either. It was extremely quiet though. My ancient rock self would have felt at home there.
I hit the road, destination unknown, except for a plan to stop by Nieu-Bethesda and visit the Owl House. So, I have a rule about picking up hitchhikers. The rule is: Don’t. Which is easy to follow because my car is full to the brim, so there is absolutely no room for additional humans. But, as I turned onto the road to Nieu-Bethesda, there was a woman standing in the searing heat, waving and asking me for a lift. I drove on by. It’s the rule. Then my conscience grabbed my steering wheel and turned my car around and much rearranging of front seat junk later, Daisy was squished in and getting a lift to town. We tried to converse but, although there were enough words between us, the way we put them together and exchanged them didn’t quite translate to anything either of us understood. It didn’t matter. We weren’t in the car together because we were looking for conversation. I did learn that the cows had their own houses to shelter from the heat and the snow. Daisy seemed both pleased and resentful about that.
Nieu-Bethesda is a tiny, remote village, famous for its Owl House created by Helen Martins. I was excited about visiting the Owl House because owls have a particular childhood and spiritual association for me, and I went there with expectations, hoping for a warm, fuzzy experience. I’m still processing my reaction to the space so it’s hard for me to write about it yet, but to say I was freaked out is an understatement. Something about the house and the energy triggered me and I fought the overwhelming urge to just run out. I’m going to write about it under Deep Woa soon, but for now I’m reading a book about Helen’s life and art and starting to get a better understanding of why I was unable to walk through the house and quietly engage with her work. She was an incredible artist and interesting person. Deeply intelligent, eccentric yes, non-conforming and complex in a way that seemingly few understood then or even now. My visit to the Owl House has sent me down a rabbit hole and I think it’ll be a while before I pop my head out with any kind of coherent thoughts about it.
On that day though, reacting purely to the energy disruption within me, I made a firm decision to stop retreating from people and resolved to find a way to hold onto me, while being part of a life filled with people and the chaos and joy and community that that brings.
After my experience I needed to just drive and drive, because that’s how I disperse energy and that’s when shifts happen. And so I drove and drove. Through so many little villages with a Pep store and a USave and no coffee shop but importantly a petrol station. I saw so many beautiful and unusual animals. I saw a white Blesbok, many birds of prey and even a huge legavaan walking along the side of the road.
Along the way I saw a sign that was advertising a cattle stock sale and the sign said, in big letters, “Bonsmaras”, which is a breed of cattle. In all my years I’ve never seen a Bonsmara sign and for me this was a bigger sign of my family beyond the veil letting me know that they are travelling with me. In our family it was a private joke to call our favourite, favourite anything our Bonsmara something. So we’d say “That’s my Bonsmara song” or “that shirt or meal or friend etc is my Bonsmara”. It’s my favourite in the whole world! It started when my parents saw an ad in the Farmer’s Weekly magazine, way back in their day, advertising cattle, and the advert said something like “I love my Bonsmara”. My folks were playful and funny and this ad for some reason was hugely amusing to them, and so the family saying was born. Before my sister and I even. So, that is my Bonsmara sign of all signs, ever.
My Mom was travelling with me though. And she let me know. Out of the blue Lorna, a friend of the family, who is extremely psychic and connected to spirits, contacted me to say that she had felt Mom’s presence for the past few days. After Mom passed I asked her please to not visit me for a while, for complicated reasons, and she has respected that. But I believe this was her way of reaching out to me without being invasive. Very un-my-Mom like, but as a spirit she’s pretty cool. I opened the door to us communicating and asked Lorna if Mom had any messages for me. So I was driving and driving and Lorna and I were exchanging Whatsapp messages through the day, and somewhere near Rouxville in the Free State I received a message via Lorna from my Mom. It was such a beautiful, loving message that there, on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, I sat in my car and just sobbed and sobbed. It’s been such a long journey for me with my Mom, I’m still processing my grief around the loss of her, so this was a moment of true and loving reconciliation which I think was embedded in the day from the start.
I hadn’t been able to stop before I got that Mom message, but now it was late in the day and I needed a place to camp for the night, which was fast approaching. But it was the Free State and there were no campsites in the region. None. I considered a BnB but there didn’t seem to be any available. So, wild camping it was! I turned onto a side dirt road and drove along until I found a spot in front of a closed gate that felt safe. There was no road beyond the gate so it seemed to be an entrance to just a field and unlikely to have any traffic. The dirt road was quiet except for one bakkie that drove past. I just knew though that the farmer was coming. And he did. I’d decided to be absolutely upfront with him about my situation when he arrived, so I told him I couldn’t find a campsite and apologised for just squatting on his land. He was so generous and offered me a more comfortable room in his home. When I declined he said I could drive into the field and camp there rather, which I did. So there I was, setting up my tent in the now dark field, to wild camp for the night, in the middle of nowhere, on my own. I confess… I was equal parts terrified and exhilarated. This was the most free I’d ever been. And deeply grateful. To the farmer, yes, but also for my popup tent.
I spent that night writing a letter to my Mom. Sitting in a tent in the middle of a random field in the Free State, under a sky saturated with the brightest stars, I ended my letter to her and to me saying “I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I thank you and I love you”. Ho’oponopono in the Wild Field. It’s my Bonsmara.