12 April 1986: Hiking, Homesickness, and the Meaning of (My) Life

Saturday, April 12, 1986, 10:30 PM, Campground southeast of Memel, Orange Free State

Many of the participants on this Mountain Club of South Africa trip are here to rock climb on the steep cliffs of the Transkop.  However, I joined a group of eleven people today for a hike over the top of the Transkop mesa, across a valley, and up to a waterfall.  It was rather desolate country, much like you might see in the mesas south of Castle Rock, Colorado with few trees, mostly grasses, and protea bushes.  This morning started out foggy, and it eventually started to rain.  Once we reached the top of the mesa, I was ready to skip the rest of the hike to a waterfall, but the others wanted to press on. 

Summit of the Transkop during a break in the rain.  Photo by Will Mahoney

As we crossed the valley it began to pour with thunder rumbling in the distance.  Still, the group pressed on.  Five and a half-year-old Elizabeth started to cry but gamely soldered on with the help of her mother.  I was well-equipped with rain gear but still got somewhat soaked.  The others were even worse off.  “These fucking South Africans are too dumb to come in out of the rain,” I thought.  “If they are this stubborn about their racial problems, no wonder they are in trouble.”  

We must have walked at least 12 km (7½ miles) over a seven-hour period.  Even my gortex boots were leaking by the end of the day.  The guy leading the hike had said it would take about four hours.  Bull shit!  And speaking of bull, at one point we crossed a fence and walked past an enormous gentleman cow (a term used by my very proper maternal grandmother who considered the term “bull” obscene).  I asked the group if they felt it was safe to encroach on his space, but no one else seemed concerned.  Actually, the big fella turned out to be very docile – maybe South African bulls know their “place”. 

This evening, I was talking with Helize, a 34-year-old Afrikaans professor at the University of Natal in Durban.  Helize, her friend Jan (a technical school instructor – I couldn’t tell if they were platonic friends or an “item”), and I drank lots of wine around the campfire.  I found Helize very open, engaging, and charming.  She gave me contact information for Barend, an older mountaineer in Cape Town she thought I should meet.  She also offered to put me in touch with some “fiery ladies” who were divorced, romantically intense, sensitive, pretty and in need of male companionship.  Unfortunately, all live in Stellenbosch outside of Cape Town which I don’t plan to visit for another five months.  Helize assured me that there are an abundance of divorced women in South Africa in their 30s who are definitely not prudes.  It was reassuring to get her perspective as I’ve been hearing that South African women in general are very conservative when it comes romantic adventures.

Tonight I’m rather exhausted after riding five hours in the Land Rover yesterday, not sleeping well last night because I was cold in my tent, hiking 12 km in the rain, and drinking too much wine.  Still, these campers are probably going to be noisy for another hour so I may as well type on and on for a while. 

Sometimes in the mornings this past week, I been really bummed-out.  I wake up after having dreams about Genie (my ex-wife), my late mother, skiing in Colorado, etc., and I feel very alone.  Consciously, I feel that my life back in Colorado had become boring, so why should I be having these homesickness dreams?  What is my subconscious trying to tell me?  Maybe it wants to hold on to something familiar.  Before leaving Colorado, I vowed not to let this kind of shit drive me back to familiarity.  I’m reminded of the time I was going to move to San Francisco after graduating from Ohio State in 1969 but loneliness and a couple of small setbacks in California caused me to run back to the familiarity of Columbus to find a job.  I can’t let that happen now.   

Earlier today a quote from Eldridge Cleaver popped into my head:  “If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.”  It took me back to a recurring feeling that maybe I can do something with my life for once that really makes a difference.  I don’t necessarily mean joining Peace Corps, but maybe something like that.  It annoys me that we Americans have so many privileges and opportunities, yet we contribute so little for the benefit of humanity.  But what could I do that I could really enjoy without feeling that I was some kind of martyr?  It just seems like there should be SOMETHING SOMEWHERE where I could fit in, in a positive way.  

For example, Elize and I were talking earlier about teaching opportunities at black South African universities.  She said they are really hurting for qualified faculty (my master’s degree would suffice), and they prefer white foreigners to white South Africans.  The government pays bonuses for teaching in black schools.  There are great bennies like six months of vacation and holidays during the year.  Could handle a job like that?  There has to be more to life than working at a dull, meaningless, comfortable job back in the States for $30,000 or even $100,000 a year.  Could I be happy doing something like that in this crazy country? 

Many of these white South Africans may be a bunch of heartless, racist bastards, but are we in America any better?  We take a passive role in oppressing the rest of the world because we could do so much good, yet we doing nothing.  We simply lean back, watch movies on our VCRs and live off the fat of the world.  It makes me feel ashamed and I think it’s disgusting.