Today we got up extra early, grabbed a lunch, and took off with some of Andrew-John's people from St. Stephen's choir to visit a farm on a mountain several hours away. (Names of towns and people such to come!)
It was a joyful journey from beginning to end. The landscape is absolutely stunning; you cannot imagine, and I cannot appropriately describe. There was a valley, and there was a mountain, and great beauty all around. I'm still in awe, so very much blown away by God's incredible creation. (I wish I didn't have to travel so far to feel this stunned!) You can practically see his hands mixing and folding the matter of the earth, shaping it just so, and scrapping little feng-shui lines across miles and miles and miles!!
Unfortunately, I dropped my camera just as we were getting out of the car! It smashed the display, but still takes pictures okay; I just can't see what I'm taking pictures of, so I snapped and snapped and snapped away just to be sure. Now I have to go through almost 250 photos and weed out the completely useless ones and then bring down the reallly awesome ones, and even then I know that there's no way a picture can say enough words (1000 won't cut it) to convey the majesty of the views.
There were seven of us altogether, and I felt like I connected deeply with the other six people there. Our hosts, our driver, our other passenger, and my dear friend... I feel like time moved totally differently there, and that I spent months getting to know each of them.
After we strolled the property we had a braai (in a different tone from the last one - I got to cook the beef myself at this one!) then went for the most hilarious, spirit-lifting drive around the mountains. We went through some rural areas, and I really hope my photos of that stuff came out.
There's a different attitude altogether there. The people use the road for walking on like a really nice comfortable path, until a car comes along and then they move to the side, and WAVE like they know you! And you wave back, and it feels so friendly and loving. At one point we saw ahead of us a guy with a heavy looking bag in each hand. Cheekily AJ suggested we all wave at him vigorously and see how he handled the situatoin. We did, and as we sped off watched the guy deftly switch the bags to one hand and wave back at us!
Have you ever bitten into a piece of fruit, just to eat it, and suddenly it bursts in your mouth, all flesh and juice and flavor sweet and tart and for a split second you're awash in the experience? It was like that for me, except it was like my heart biting into a piece of joy, and it flooded my whole chest for a minute and I laughed so hard it leaked out of my eyes. I don't know why that touched me so deeply; we weren't being cruel but we were having a good time with the man, and he was so generous with his greeting...
I'm so in love right now, with everything and everyone. I wish you could have been there with me (all of you); and I wish these photos wouldn't be totally crap so at least I can give you a taste of that juice that's still dribbling down my soul.
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