Personal account: Trailing the Otter

It was overwhelming to know that we had this huge expanse to ourselves. Our own Eden to wander through, pools to explore, waterfalls to frolic in. Is this how the Khoi-San felt?

So happy my soul was, to reconnect with its nomadic nature. Somewhere in all of us is that longing for the travelling life, to carry only a few belongings and wander. That sense of being a clan: sharing, helping, protecting each other. Singing silly songs, crossing rivers, confronting fears, pushing our bodies to their limits like hunters on the stalk. Like gatherers, except forbidden to gather a single flower, rock or shellfish from the Nation’s Park; instead my spirit gathers it all in like nets from the deep, to feed me now while I lie wearing an aircast boot, nursing my cracked metatarsal like a one-legged bride of Frankenstein.

On Day 3 (Yellow Cosmic Sun), I began to sense a strangeness from the start. When Aqua Loverboy discovered his huge bags of biltong and trail mix vanished from the hut. Genets are fast sneaky felines, yet still we will never know.

The path that day swerved through extreme beauty. Sight after sight appeared like Ayahuasca visions: gentle forests where friendly climbing milkwoods offered picnic shade, soft streams where we soaked like bags in strong tea. At the peaks Fynbos meadows brushed the sky while sea pools below hid their bounty in a poachers’ paradise. That was the day I connected to the place. That stretch of sand tempting me into cartwheeling, handstands, headstand, backbend – arched like the vaulted cosmos, completely in my body, pulsing with energy. I was the orgasm between Mother Earth and Father Sky.

Yet magic and mischief began their dance. From Aphrodite’s pool, domain of the sprites, through clumps of scrub where bony trees grabbed at us to swamps that sucked our shoes into their squelch. At the Kleinbos River Mouth a sneaky incoming tide dipped our backpacks and floated our slops like little boats.

So maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me when I crossed the Lottering River that even with the support of a walking stick, each step felt uneasy. A premonition of what awaited? On the last stretch where the steps descended to the Oakhurst Huts nestled below, the final prank crouched, and then pounced. It foiled my left foot, the one with the aching arch. The left: Ida, the feminine moon side faltered and took me down with a twist and a small scream. Trapped by the weight of my pack I wriggled free and then pain and nausea began. I fought tears that finally broke when I lay with my foot up on a bag of clothes feeling fires of fury roar under my ankle bone, knowing that was it – the end of the trail for me. A rude awakening from my reverie. My heart broke that this trail I had booked a year ago and waited for with such anticipation, was ending this way: unfinished, alone.

So I lay in the hut, the twist in the tale. Until teams of my colleagues, the rangers would carry me out on a stretcher, switching in a bizarre relay up that steep, steep path. The rest of my hiking clan had left at first light to cross the notorious Bloukrans River. I closed my eyes to shut out the roller coaster height as I felt my body slipping downwards under the straps. Exit Forest Punk (without her Funk Bunk).

My rescue team