THE WORLD OF WATER: A PERSONAL JOURNEY - Part I: Introduction

As I near rapidly the completion of my sixth decade of tenure on our Earth, I feel more and more compelled towards introspection: to make sense of what has happened, what I have experienced and how I have reacted to such experiences. Of course, my own journey represents only an infinitesimal fraction of the experiences of all members of a particular and peculiar species, Homo sapiens – never mind the experiences of millions of other species that have been and are inhabitants of this singular planet.

My own personal reminiscences represent at best a wisp of time, a miniscule crumb of place – nostalgias that are so insignificant as to make thinking or writing about them seem supremely self-important. Yet, there remains this compulsion deep within me, to ponder, to think, to express and to share these recollections. I do not believe that this is arrogance: if anything, I stand humbled and in complete awe of the universe as a whole, and particularly of this planet I may call home and its myriad denizens.

I was very privileged to grow up in a house on the edge of a suburb. Looking out from my bedroom window, I was faced, not by a neighbour’s dwelling with tended lawns and flowerbeds, but by a sizeable patch of South African veld. ‘Veld’ has various meanings in southern Africa: it can refer to bushveld (savannah) or to grassland; it can incorporate kopjes (boulder-strewn hills) or rante (rocky ridges); it can be undulating or flat. It did not matter to me at all what kind of veld I was playing in or trudging through as a child; the veld became my spiritual home at a very young age.

South Africa is a water-poor part of the African continent. Where I grew up on the Highveld (a vast plateau in the interior of the country covered in grassland), the winters were dry – up to five months of clear blue skies with no rain at all. Brown, dusty, fire-prone grasslands. When, as kids, we did stumble across water of any kind, our delight was expressed fully: mud-fights in shallow pans, crab-hunting along rivulets, or bathing in deep, rocky pools on a hot summer day were all part of childhood and early adolescence.

The contrast between the veld in all its facets and the watery worlds made an impression on me from very early on. The world of water was fluid; the veld was solid. The colour palette of the veld was striking and beautiful, but it paled when compared to the ever-changing palette of the world of water. In this rare world on the Highveld, the liquid world, there was flow – swift movement and rapid observable changes when compared to the terrestrial realm.

Thus my fascination with two worlds in particular: the African veld and its inhabitants, and the world of water in all of its forms – rain, mist, ponds, pans, rivers and oceans, and clouds too.

In the next four instalments of this series, I will be looking a little more closely at this most magnificent World of Water.