Love is

I have just come back from a wonderful two week holiday in the city. I must say, I had a few separation issues from the bush whilst I was amidst the hustle and bustle of traffic and people.

My two week trip was taken for a wedding. Being that the bride was one of my best friends and all, and I had been asked to be part of the bridal party, I could not exactly RSVP a no, and I wouldn't have even dreamt of doing that.
So I packed up my car and made the great trek of 12 hours through to Kwazulu Natal, my place of birth.

I thoroughly enjoyed the drive, and found the change of scenery to be rather refreshing. From rolling hills speckled with aloe to more rolling hills sprinkled with acacia trees. It was breathtaking.  I made a short sunset stop in Kokstad to visit a very old and dear friend. So while we sat in my car, and watched the sun go down over the beautiful city, we laughed, caught up and shared new stories.

This trip, as I mentioned, was for a wedding, and it was nothing short of spectacular.  When I was thinking about the words I was going to string together for my speech, I had a good long think about marriage in general. Why do people get married? And are they sure its to the right person? How do they know if it's true love? I was thinking about all these little things and decided to rather just think about the couple at hand and write about them, and THEIR love. I started by browsing through a few quotes until I concluded that they were all utter rubbish, and mostly pretty boring. So I invented an array of quotes based and inspired by my two friends that were tying the knot. The speech was a hit and I had a few members of the crowd in tears. The truth was, I had written that speech in about 15 to 20 minutes, as my darling two love birds had left me with so much material to use, I could not have written anything short of four pages.

During the ceremony and after spending so much time with the couple, it hit me...almost as hard as the few glasses of champagne I had been generously receiving. It hit me like an epiphany! Love is...

Yup, thats it! And so I began thinking and wrote a little reminder on my facebook page so that I wouldn't forget the moment and the way I thought about it all. Being a girl who has grown into a woman terrified of marriage, I did not want to let my progress of warming to the idea to completely disintegrate with my wonderful bubbly feel good liquid.

Love is unique to each person. It has no boundaries or rules, because if you truly love, then there wouldn't need to be boundaries and rules. Love is caring more about another person than about yourself, wanting to give them the best that you can because. ..well...you love them. Love is free, it isn't scary when it's real,it's glorious. Love is not always with another person, love is sunrises and sunsets, love is the sound of rain on any surface. Love is not meant to be exploited or used, be careful with it because it is rare.  It can only be seen and felt with open eyes and pure hearts. Love is helping another person when you can, love is kind words and positive actions. Love is uplifiting and gentle. Love just is....

I have been blessed in such a way that I have fallen in love everday for the past six years. I fall in love with my environment and all the things in it. I fall in love with the people, be it friends or mentors, but the one thing I have not done very well is love a man, a partner, a person who should mean more to me than me myself, more than my passion for travels and adventures...until now.

He was a chapter in my past, that life very strangely brought back into my future after a very personal conversation I had with the higher powers and after a statement I made to the world. I asked God in a very pleading manner, why he had given me a soul with so much passion and fire for the world and its people and no one to share it with? Why had he instilled in me a heart so big with so much love and no one to go home to everyday? Why is it that he had given me a love to travel and experience the world, when a lifestyle like that makes it almost impossible to bump into someone along the way who may want to embrace that way of living too.

Ha...im sure he laughed, because the very next day someone did enter, or should I say re-enter my life, and started to change my whole way of looking at love in the means of another person. This is what I wrote...

" Are you allowed to be in love without fear, without worry or insecurities. Are you allowed to be in love without boundaries, without change without doubt. Yes you are, you can be whoever you want to be and whoever you are. And when you find that person that allows you to dance without following rules then you can love without all of that other stuff."

And even if I dont know what the outcome will be, i will continue to dance....

Come sit at the fire and hear a tale

It has started to get very cold out here in the bush, and nights consist of fire places and sherry. The good thing about being able to build fires again is the conversation a fire draws. People forget about their phones and laptops and all huddle around together and swap various stories about back in the day. Each one has some form of soothing liquid in a glass combined with a witty tongue to add to the humorous session around the crackling flames. Hunters swap stories about their different trophies and whose is in fact the largest. In between these very serious discussions, the stories about bush toilets, and involuntary bowel movements sneak a bit of the conversation lime light.

After much laughter and plenty of liquids I get to know each and every individual on a few different levels, and in winter, the layers of each character slowly peel away until it feels as if I have known some of these guests for a good life time.

In fact, right now I have an elderly gentleman, (if a gentleman and hunter can be used in the same sentence) who has concluded to calling me his girlfriend.

It all started one early crisp dark morning when I was going about my morning wake up calls to get the men up and ready for their day. The mornings commence at around 4:00am, and as I got to Craig’s room I noticed his light was already on and he had in fact beaten me at the wake up. To be sure, I took a peek inside to make sure he was up and about and a knock on his door was indeed no longer necessary.  Well I did find Craig up, but he was still in bed and it seemed as if he was reading, so I just shouted a friendly good morning to remind him that it was time to take on a new day of hunting.

A chain of events continued as a result of my very innocent duty of wake ups. Craig entered the lodge for breakfast and we started to chat. A few of the other hunters and their Professional hunting guides were already up and about indulging in their first cup of coffee for the day. After a few good mornings I said to Craig “I noticed you were up before your wake up this morning, but I peeked to make sure you were definitely awake” well, I could not have given the guys a bigger door to run into and snag me. The comments that followed were PG rated and some serious blush enhancing material. A long story short, I have been labelled the wanted peeping tom of the lodge.

Days like these make me really appreciate every single individual that steps foot into my home away from home. These gentlemen like Craig are businessmen, entrepreneurs, doctors, pilots, family men, grandfathers, fathers and sons, but when they enter our lodge they are just people, people that like to unwind, make a few dirty jokes, share stories and bond over a fire and the bush.

Nature has this funny way of bringing everyone down to the same humble level, it doesn’t matter where you come from, what your title is, or what great things you have achieved. In the bush you are secondary to nature and the guy sitting next to you is just another human being.

I was asked last night if I had a dark side, I was initially a little confused, and when I asked for a further explanation to the rather strange question, my guest elaborated by saying that I am always so happy, in the mornings, in the evenings and generally every time he sees me. I had to admit to him that yes I do in fact have my down days but they don’t last for longer than an hour or so.

When I look around what do I actually have to be grumpy about? I am blessed with surroundings that are not only breath taking but have this magical way of stripping all your layers and burdens and bringing everyone back down to earth, literally and figuratively. I meet wonderful people every single day, and I get to know them from the core. In fact a grown man left us a few weeks back and there were a few tears at his parting.

Nature shows us cruelty and some heart wrenching things, but it is combined with extreme appreciation and understanding of a balance between cruelty and compassion. This lesson alone will help you grow in leaps and bounds.

How can I have a dark side in a place where fires burn and people bond, in a place that comforts you and accepts you, that blesses you every single day with sunrises and sunsets, with new births and regretted deaths?

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining. They just shine.”