There is a chaos that appears in the rearview mirror of my mind – back to when we lived in Hillcrest Durban.
Taxis cutting three lanes at once. Traffic Lights that never quite sync. Harrasing beggars at every traffic light. The tight-jaw feeling of concrete and hooters and accidents and everyone rushing toward somewhere they’ll only sit in traffic again tomorrow to reach.
We don’t have that anymore.
What we have now are our five fur kids piling into the truck, every second or third week, all elbows and tails and noses pressed to glass, because somehow, when Lance jingles the car keys, without a single one of them being told, they know exactly what a road trip to Ladismith means.
A trip with treats.
Molly Joy and Daisy Moon claim my lap and the front windows first, long noses out into the wind, ears streaming backward like something out of an old road movie.
Saydee, our silly fat girl Malinois, plants herself right behind us, chin resting on the console, voicing her excitement the entire time in her goofball way, as if every single kilometer is thrilling news that’s only her job, to announce aloud.
Above her, on the contraption Lance built especially for them, our two oldies, Lucy and Riley , curl up together, sleeping the whole way there and back, snoring their Jack Russel harmonies that somehow floats above silly Saydee’s commentary.
Lance drives. I watch the flowers.
The R62 stretches out ahead of us like something unrolled just for the occasion, fynbos floods both verges in yellow and pink and purples so bright it looks almost unreasonable, almost too generous a thing for only a Friday morning supply trip.
It takes about forty minutes from our home to the farm gate where we turn onto the R62 and then the fynbos really opens up in a long golden run where the veld on the roadside overflows with impossible color, spilling into every gap, the wide open spaces leave for it.
I call it the flower power tunnel, though of course there’s no tunnel at all, nothing but open sky and open road and color, for as far as either of us can see.
Coming from a life of highway walls and traffic barriers, driving through actual open beauty instead of past yet another billboard still catches both of us slightly off guard, in the best way.
We have slowed down here without meaning to, it’s just a slower pace, all of this big sky country living.
This is such a different kind of drive than the one we used to know. No hooting, no bumper to bumper crawl, no tight grip on the wheel bracing for someone else’s bad decision. Just the R62 unraveling ahead, mountain shadow and flower gold trading places km after km, whilst behind us Saydee narrates and Lucy and Riley snore away, undisturbed by any of it.
We get to Ladismith and do the rounds – the co-op first for whatever hardware the ranch is demanding that week, then the tiny Spar for supplies and yummy pizzas , then the farm stall last, for fresh fruit and veg and eggs so good they hardly seem like they belong to the same word as the ones we used to buy in Durban
Five fur kids wait in the car through every stop, Molly Joy and Daisy Moon scanning the pavement and the people for anything interesting. Sausage dogs are such curious nosy creatures, pardon the pun:) Saydee narrates , Lucy and Riley still fast asleep, these two oldies entirely unbothered by the errands their humans seem to think are so important.
Before heading home we do the golf course stop, for treats and a grass run between fynbos flowers and no golfers ever in sight. It seems to be a golf course forgotten in time.
This is the kind of magic that happens now, usually on a friday, a supply run that neither of us expected when we packed up our old life.
It turns out you don’t need anything extraordinary to happen on an end of week early morning drive.
You just need an open road, five happy fur kids doing exactly what they each do best, fynbos spilling gold into every verge, and someone beside you who slows the car down at the same bend every single time, for no reason except that it’s beautiful, and you’re both still here to see it.
Somewhere on the R62 tonight, the flowers will be closing up for the evening, the same way they’ll open again tomorrow for whoever passes.
And somewhere, you will find us , driving home slowly, in no hurry at all, five fur kids sleeping and sniffing and narrating the whole way back to the mountain we now call home.
SharynAnn
There is a chaos that appears in the rearview mirror of my mind – back to when we lived in Hillcrest Durban.
Taxis cutting three lanes at once. Traffic Lights that never quite sync. Harrasing beggars at every traffic light. The tight-jaw feeling of concrete and hooters and accidents and everyone rushing toward somewhere they’ll only sit in traffic again tomorrow to reach.
We don’t have that anymore.
What we have now are our five fur kids piling into the truck, every second or third week, all elbows and tails and noses pressed to glass, because somehow, when Lance jingles the car keys, without a single one of them being told, they know exactly what a road trip to Ladismith means.
A trip with treats.
Molly Joy and Daisy Moon claim my lap and the front windows first, long noses out into the wind, ears streaming backward like something out of an old road movie.
Saydee, our silly fat girl Malinois, plants herself right behind us, chin resting on the console, voicing her excitement the entire time in her goofball way, as if every single kilometer is thrilling news that’s only her job, to announce aloud.
Above her, on the contraption Lance built especially for them, our two oldies, Lucy and Riley , curl up together, sleeping the whole way there and back, snoring their Jack Russel harmonies that somehow floats above silly Saydee’s commentary.
Lance drives. I watch the flowers.
The R62 stretches out ahead of us like something unrolled just for the occasion, fynbos floods both verges in yellow and pink and purples so bright it looks almost unreasonable, almost too generous a thing for only a Friday morning supply trip.
It takes about forty minutes from our home to the farm gate where we turn onto the R62 and then the fynbos really opens up in a long golden run where the veld on the roadside overflows with impossible color, spilling into every gap, the wide open spaces leave for it.
I call it the flower power tunnel, though of course there’s no tunnel at all, nothing but open sky and open road and color, for as far as either of us can see.
Coming from a life of highway walls and traffic barriers, driving through actual open beauty instead of past yet another billboard still catches both of us slightly off guard, in the best way.
We have slowed down here without meaning to, it’s just a slower pace, all of this big sky country living.
This is such a different kind of drive than the one we used to know. No hooting, no bumper to bumper crawl, no tight grip on the wheel bracing for someone else’s bad decision. Just the R62 unraveling ahead, mountain shadow and flower gold trading places km after km, whilst behind us Saydee narrates and Lucy and Riley snore away, undisturbed by any of it.
We get to Ladismith and do the rounds – the co-op first for whatever hardware the ranch is demanding that week, then the tiny Spar for supplies and yummy pizzas , then the farm stall last, for fresh fruit and veg and eggs so good they hardly seem like they belong to the same word as the ones we used to buy in Durban
Five fur kids wait in the car through every stop, Molly Joy and Daisy Moon scanning the pavement and the people for anything interesting. Sausage dogs are such curious nosy creatures, pardon the pun:) Saydee narrates , Lucy and Riley still fast asleep, these two oldies entirely unbothered by the errands their humans seem to think are so important.
Before heading home we do the golf course stop, for treats and a grass run between fynbos flowers and no golfers ever in sight. It seems to be a golf course forgotten in time.
This is the kind of magic that happens now, usually on a friday, a supply run that neither of us expected when we packed up our old life.
It turns out you don’t need anything extraordinary to happen on an end of week early morning drive.
You just need an open road, five happy fur kids doing exactly what they each do best, fynbos spilling gold into every verge, and someone beside you who slows the car down at the same bend every single time, for no reason except that it’s beautiful, and you’re both still here to see it.
Somewhere on the R62 tonight, the flowers will be closing up for the evening, the same way they’ll open again tomorrow for whoever passes.
And somewhere, you will find us , driving home slowly, in no hurry at all, five fur kids sleeping and sniffing and narrating the whole way back to the mountain we now call home.
SharynAnn
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