Earth Day: For Whom the Bell Tolls?

April 22, 2019April 22, 2019 | Nature on the Edge

Today we’re marking the 49th Earth Day after it’s inception in 1970. Celebrations?! It should be a wake up call, an urgent clarion call to action right round the globe! Let us not kid ourselves the environment is in a deteriorating state and we’re killing Earth’s creatures.

Scenes are pictured at the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve where beaches are littered with plastic and storm strewn fishing gear from nets to piles of rope, fish traps. Recent whale carcasses washed up near Buffels Bay and another on the Atlantic side near the Tommy T Tucker shipwreck.

The Scend of the Sea

January 30, 2018 | Nature on the Edge

At times the elements conspire in perfect harmony to produce exquisite serenity. The harsh wind retreats and the sea wallows quietly:

In the scene below Venus Pool lies unruffled in a silken sheen.

Conditions can change quickly though and the Atlantic Ocean can push up in rambunctious form with that devillish “Cape Doctor”, the southeasterly wind and the full moon spring tides. Sometimes it also drives low cloud scudding across the Peninsula in a ‘black’ mood and cloaks the mountains in a foggy blanket of moisture. On one such morning, we stand and watch in awe as waves come belting out of the ocean in a heart thumping rhythm smashing into the rocky ledges. It’s as if Mother Nature lifts up her skirts to dance a fandango. Two swimmers enter the pool and in a daring dash of defiance in the face of such raw power, they sprint across and back to safety. Whatever it is, this sense of ebullience, we leave feeling high on elation.

WPC: Variations on a theme – tying into the moods of the sea.

Shape Shifters

August 8, 2017 | Nature on the Edge

The craggy landscape beckons and the late afternoon light casts a spell. Hiking along a ridge line above the coast from Olifantsbos (Cape of Good Hope Reserve) shadows and shapes merge – figures appear. Buck species like the shy Grey Rhebok keep a distance and then meld with the scenery. Red Hartebeest scamper behind boulders. Eland, the largest of the antelope species, show their majestic form. As they pass in front of the ochre coloured sandstone they blend with the rocks, and with a shift in imagination – like slipping through a portal to travel through time and space, a different realm appears. There was a time when animals were people and the San Bushmen captured scenes depicted in their rock art when Hare, Mantis and Eland had different stories to tell.