Water that Thunders

 If we had been at Augrabies Falls at the beginning, not the end, of  2011 we would have encountered the falls in full flood.  The photos below were taken in January 2011 and displayed at the information centre.   Many of the observation platforms were washed away by the force of the water.  

Just being at Augrabies  under normal circumstances was awesome enough -- made me aware of my fragile humanity in the face and  power of nature.  But imagine being there during a flood like the one  photographed below!!  

Augrabies  is a Khoi word that means "water that thunders"

Off the Beaten Track

Where to begin?    I’m in South Africa --- on the open road. Traveling through remote and lonely landscapes.  Vast distances. Magnificent skies. Ancient broken geography that has humbled me, stilled my soul.   

I’ve been traveling with my sister, Deborah, in her green Suzuki  4 wheel  drive which she bought (second- hand) the day before we set off.  She wanted an adventure.    Me too.  (I think we have it in our genes).  

So we took a long and less traveled route from Johannesburg to Cape Town and at times felt we were the only people on this earth.  We drove and drove on an empty road with dry country stretching out on either side. We saw no one else when we hiked along the precipice of a gigantic gorge,  and were  alone when we wandered for hours through strange and otherworldly rock formations and ancient caves.   

We spent two nights at Augrabies Falls (towards the border with Namibia). 
This is where the Orange River thunders into a sheer ravine. 
Supposedly the sixth largest falls in the world. 

The scale of it !!

Deborah on Arrow Point

Hanging on to my hat

And to myself

 There is a strange and oddly indifferent energy about the place. 

Wherever you look, shapes of elemental figures and faces reveal 

themselves in the rocks and in the plunging cliffs.  

It feels as though something ancient and powerful 

is being held in the stone.    

Waiting....

Retreat

This past week I have taken a break from beading and focused on my writing.

I am up in the Blue Ridge Mountains at a retreat.  It has been bliss.   

Days writing and walking, evenings listening to readings and live music.

There are over a hundred of us here.  Everyone is working on their own thing – pottery, quilting, writing, photography, music ….  There is a creative energy in the air, a happy meeting of like minds and an almost tangible gratitude that we can indulge our passions in such a beautiful setting.  

We’ve had three crystal clear days.  Distant mountains layered one behind the other with a clarity seldom seen in the summer months.  Most of the autumn leaves are down by now, but there are sheltered areas on the hillsides where the color blazes forth in full intensity. The throat catches when sunlight shines through those reds and yellows and the bluest of skies is their backdrop. 

Graham is with me. This is his first time here, my third.  He has been writing a chapter on revenue forecasting (and has not offered to read his work aloud after dinner).  I have, and enjoyed doing my readings and the chance to listen to other writers and poets.  

 It has been lovely having Graham here with me.  We have taken long walks in the mountains and not seen another soul -- plenty of fresh bear scat though, and, on our drive in we did see a small cub run across the road and scramble up a wooded bank.  Most evenings before dinner we have done yoga  with a group of painters from Savannah. 

But mostly we have been writing.  Wonderful to get back to it  -- my time these past months has been totally consumed with designing necklaces and I've missed the writing. But, as I take up the pen again   (or more accurately put fingers to keyboard) I realize how much there is in common between beading and writing.  I think of words as being like beads.  In both cases I pick and select (either words or beads) and arrange them in an order and design which pleases me.

   Both activities work my fingers, strain my eyes, gobble up time.   

Both are deeply satisfying 

 

More Maridadi

 I've been held captive by my beads.  There they are, spread across the dining room table.  Calling, calling their siren call.  Sometimes I try to walk quickly past them, averting my eyes.  It seldom works, I am drawn in.  I will reach over to pick up a bead and see how it looks placed next to a different bead, and then how about adding ……

I might stand for ages bent uncomfortably over the table, selecting and arranging, reluctant to sit down and devote myself properly to the task, knowing I was actually on my way to do something else.  The attraction is too strong and I usually succumb, and finally pull out the chair, rub the ache in my back, and settle into the task, eager to see how the design might work,  but also somewhat uneasy, disappointed at my lack of will, knowing there was something else I ought to be doing.  Laundry mounts, food supplies dwindle, emails are unanswered, dinner is late.  

My eyes get strained and I stack reading glasses on top of each other.  Late at night I might have three pairs balanced on my nose when Graham walks through to tell me it’s midnight, time for bed.  I drive to my  morning walks thinking about colors and shapes.  I lie in bed at night jotting down ideas for new necklaces.  I want to make sure that I will offer a full range of hefts and lengths and colors and looks and prices.   Chunky and petite, ethnic and glamorous, choker and  long,  bright and muted ……  

Once I have begun a necklace, and know in my mind how it will end, I am impatient to move on to designing another.  It takes great resolve of purpose for me to actually complete the full length of the necklace.  And then there is the matter of adding a clasp.  I resist closure, preferring to leave my options open.  What if I think of a more pleasing way to tweak the design?  What if I’d rather use that special bead in some other necklace?

No matter how far ahead I start planning for a show, it is always a mad rush at the end. I keep creating, keep playing with the beauty and energy of my beads for way too long. I leave too little time for adding clasps,  for naming each new necklace, for writing up a description of the special beads in each design, for photographing my latest Maridadi creations.  

Here are a few.....

Hand cut Jade from Afghanistan

Unusual Etched Bone beads from Kenya

 

In addition to the Boston show later this month,  I will be hosting a joint show with Helen Conrad  at my Durham home in November.  Helen is an extremely talented illustrator.  Check out her website.

Maridadi in Boston

My dining room table is awash with beads.  Several partially completed necklaces lie in a row.  Half way through designing one necklace, I have an idea for another or for several others and I reach over to pluck new beads from bowls and string just a few together to see how they would work in unison.  It is  finishing them off that is difficult for me.   Repetition, completion ---- not my strong suit.  I’m happier launching in to something new, the unknown.

Luckily I have a deadline.    In October, my friend Roseanne is hosting another Maridadi jewelry show for me in Boston.   I named my business (and my red Prius) Maridadi.  It is a Swahili word and means “stylish, tasteful, pleasing to the eye”.  

Roseanne visited us a few times when we lived in Kenya and came with me to the colorful, sprawling outdoor markets where vendors from all over Africa displayed their wares.   We would sit on small three-legged stools under the equatorial sun.  Sometimes a trader would hold a large colorful umbrella over us for shade while we sifted through baskets of old Venetian trade beads and ornate silver pendants from Ethiopia and Yemen.  We would finger strings of beads hand -crafted from Kenyan bone and horn and ostrich eggshell.  Colorful recycled glass beads from Ghana, tiny striped trade beads, bronze bi-cones, bauxite, coconut, malachite ….. 

Roseanne purchased dramatic necklaces and developed a  passion for wooden headrests.  She has quite a collection now, arrayed artistically in her high-ceilinged Boston apartment.  I will be able to use these to display my jewelry -- drape the length of a slim necklace over a finely carved Ethiopian headrest,  coil a chunky choker at the base of a solid Samburu one.

I have an embarrassment of beads.  I could open a shop.  They fill cupboards and drawers, spill out of baskets, roll under the table.  It’s an addiction.   And stringing them in pleasing and unusual designs is also an addiction and one of the most pleasurable things I know. 

The Boston show has given me an excuse to clutter my long dining room table again. Whole days will fly by as I sit happily working with these tiny bundles of beauty.  Many of the beads have traveled vast distances over huge spans of time.  It seems amazing that they have arrived here, in my possession.   I hold them in my palm and, as I thread them on to a necklace, I  wonder where they are headed next on their journey.   Massachusetts, perhaps?

   

  

and still beads galore!

Blue Ridge

I must go up to the hills again, the blue hills and the sky.  

And so we did.  

Off to Brevard and slightly cooler temperatures, breathable air,  waterfalls and vistas awaiting.

There's something in me which craves a big view.  I want to see the sky stretched out.  I  want to see the lie of the land.  I need to experience that humility of being small in a vastness of geography.  

And I must be a participant, not just an observer.  I need to walk, cover some distance, be there long enough to see the changes in the sky, have time to notice the small things at my feet.  No heroics here.  I'm not one of those who has to scale the highest mountain or build up a sweat.  I'm not made of such stern stuff.  A few hours of walking, a picnic with a view,  the joy of nature's surprises ....  

Art Loeb trail Tennent Mountain

When we hiked here last year the wild berries were abundant.  The slopes were freckled with  blueberry pickers, bent over, foraging like troops of baboons.  We gathered handfuls -- blueberries and blackberries -- way beyond saturation, the flavors sweet in our mouths, stains on our fingers and lips.   

This year there were no pickers, no fruit.  Small hard clusters which never ripened.  Barren bushes.  Weather they said.  Some talked of hail early in the year, others of drought.  We heard of the sad hunger of bears and their desperation for food.  We learned that a part of the Mountains to Sea trail had been closed due to bears.  Their crazed hunger.

Blue Yonder

 It's the mountains that call to us.  And the rivers -- their fresh joyous tumble, 

their rush and their songs, their burbles and their falls. 

Choosing our picnic rock

boulder hopping

This area is known as the "Land of Waterfalls".  

And we have hiked to many over the years.

This visit we took a long hike through DuPont State Forest and got caught in a tremendous thunderstorm which stalled, thunder and lightning directly overhead for almost 90 minutes, 

the torrential rain rushing over our ankles in a red rivulet along the narrow steep forest paths.  

We came to Bridal Veils Falls and clambered up the slick granite.  The sun came out.

You can walk (stooped) behind these falls.

The meadows are full of Queen Anne's Lace.  Butterflies.  Busy bees.

And in the forests all manner of wonders hidden and sheltered

And then you reach a peak, look up and out and, like an ocean of land, 
there are the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Folding and rising. 
Gathered peaks, waves of blue.

 

Mists like sea foam

We stayed, for the second year running, at The Red House Inn in Brevard  -- charming, knowledgeable hosts  (Tracie and Daniel),  full English breakfasts served on the veranda, (local produce, fresh flowers in vases), and a choice of excellent restaurants a short stroll away. 

 Reluctant to leave the area, we spent a few hours in Asheville 
-  a dose of charm before heading home

  Stop here

Urban forest.  Beauty and promise

 

A short break, but just what we needed. A restorative few days
with the space and the grandeur to breathe deep, to look ahead.
To take the time to notice the little things.
To be in awe.