I haven't been on a camping trip since forever, but only because I let my car go in a mad life challenge in 2019. And you can't complain about the public transport in the Western Cape...
because there isn't any.
I did visit the place I once called "my home away from home" in 2018 three or four times at least.
Beaverlac was my getaway, break and reboot. It was also only three hours or so from town. I knew the place, and the roads that lead to it, so well that I'd often just throw my tent into the car and hit the road when I felt like a break.
This happened quite a bit in 2018 and, looking back, I guess I should have seen what was coming and taken some kind of action before the proverbial sh!t hit the fan so hard that everything disintegrated.
Including myself.
Hindsight, huh?
But denial isn't just a river...
loathe the saying so won't even finish it. But you get the drift.
Regardless... no recent camping trips for me, sadly.
I did find these photos while I was digging through my archives in search of some writing I did about the last time I visited this special place for the Weekend-Engagement concept.
The photos aren't of the evacuation of my life for two weeks in 2018.
They're of a holiday I had there way back, when things were simpler, with my (once was little) girl. A week we spent together out there where the air was clear and where time slowed down. When one on one time was all we had to enjoy because no signal, electricity, responsibilities or interruptions.
F*ck did we play a lotta "Go Fish!"
We went up over the summer holiday break for a weekend and ended up staying for six or seven days. The day we were supposed to return home I asked her if she wanted to stay another day.
This went on for roughly a week.
It still remains, to this day, one of the best weeks of my life.
While we were there my daughter sneaked off and met the wildlife guy (Brahm I think his name was) while I wasn't looking. She didn't tell me because she knew I'd say "no holding weird sh!t" she explained afterwards. But without the swearing of course.
I was a bit of a hover mom back then.
Brahm went up there every summer to give a show about the wildlife and fauna in the area. He was a lovely guy and put on a great performance. His enthusiasm for the creepy crawlies was contagious and the kids adored him.
My little lass had already made her way over to check out the crates and buckets full of Brahm's impending displays before he began. There were snakes, enormous spiders and more. She kindly took the time to run back to our campsite, proudly told me she'd held a scorpion and then bolted back to the field for more.
I followed suit just as quickly.
We went super simple because who knew we would stay for so long.
It was perfect!
The last time I was up at my special place was at the end of 2018.
I'd run myself into the ground, trying to juggle too much, and was so burnt out by the time I got up there that I slept for three days straight. I only left my tent to forage food from the boot of my car or use the bathroom.
Life had accelerated to a crisis and, although I didn't realise it then, a turning point as well.
On day four I began to write again for the first time in almost thirty years.
I stayed for two weeks.
Ten days on my own before my life partner drove up with my son for the last bit.
I slept in my tent. I had only a small one plate gas cooker and a cooler box that I kept filled with ice for the perishables. I would empty the water out every morning and refill it with two bags of ice from the basically stocked campsite shop, conveniently within walking distance.
Simplicity brings me peace.
I hardly spoke to anyone besides the woman in the small shop for those ten days. A full retreat of solitude and silence.
It was bliss.
I think when the noise of daily life is reduced it's easier to see things more clearly. I'd been confused for some time about what I wanted. Riddled with doubt and the residue of a destructive past relationship. Full of fear and anxiety that I might find myself back in that position again.
But open spaces and silence reduce the static noise.
It was on this trip that I decided to ask the man I'd been dating for almost a year and a half to be my husband.
Neither of us were big on formalities or ceremonies.
But I spent a day making him a ring out of an old energy drink can I'd found. Cutting it into strips and fashioning it with my bare hands. I left a part of the logo, an eagle, on the outermost wound piece of the tin.
My fingers were bleeding by the time I was done but I barely noticed.
I was too focused on considering our future and on letting go of the life I no longer wanted to be a part of.
I also made a list of the reasons why I was about to commit to a forever with him to clarify, for myself, the decision. And to remember, I guess.
He'd been lightly pressuring me to move in together and make a go of it for some time. But my new fear regarding that kind of arrangement, and having been pathologically independent even before that, didn't make me easy to convince.
Sometimes if a person's history is too messy it can stain the present and even their future. And at times I would still forget he wasn't my history and this made it difficult to stay.
He said yes.
But life and people intervened and we lost each other in the chaos.
I've been going to Beaverlac to get away from it all and remember who I am for over thirty years now.
It was once the best kept secret in the Western Cape and you'd have pretty much the whole place to yourself if you visited. I have memories of this place going back to my early twenties when I was first introduced to it by some friends.
It really was my home away from home.
Then a Facebook page was put up and things changed dramatically.
I began to only visit out of season and during the week when I knew it would be quieter. But I still went.
I don't think I'll go back there anymore.
Too much has happened to go back.
But I keep sharing that nothing is all good and nothing is all bad either. Because this is an undeniable fact.
The flip-side of all of this is that I'm finally gonna be inspired to visit some of the places I never got to see because I was too comfortable with my special place to even bother finding them.
Now I just need to get hold of a van.
(Working on it)
Hardened Dreamer
Mother
Warrior
Determined Dancer
and Stargazer
still...
Beyond fear is freedom
And there is nothing to be afraid of.
To Life, with Love... and always for Truth!
Nicky Dee
All other images my own