Roadtrip

We are the archaeologists of our own lives. While we dance nimbly on the surface, the strata of our past selves accumulates below our feet. Slowly, layer upon layer of detritus crushes our forgotten pains and joys into barren dust.

Oh, we try to remember those lost glories — mounting infrequent expeditions, each doomed to barely dig through the present before declaring the challenge unsurmountable — but the all-encompassing here and now is a cage whose siren-song we can't ignore for long.

And so, as in more academic endeavours, the most valuable discoveries are those which come to us by chance. A shepherd follows the frightened lamb into a cave, and the light from his flashlight is the first in millenia to show the expressive swirls of our ancestors' emotions painted on the walls.

***

"Look what I spotted when I was in Nieu-Bethesda!", read Lara's message. I haven't spoken to her since I left South Africa last year, and when her message finds me browsing the shelves of a small bookstore in the Third Arrondissement it brings with it a jolt of excitement and loneliness. These six months have been nothing short of gruelling, as I try to settle into a new life: attempting to organise the delivery of new appliances in very broken French, battling against incomprehensible bureaucracies to open bank accounts, and seldom sharing more than pleasantries with anyone other than Guillaume — whose demanding workload leaves little time for the two of us.

Lara's message brings everything I left at home crashing back. The picture she sent shows two framed photographs hanging above a wingback chair: sepia studio portraits of a young man and a slightly younger woman. He's wearing a military jacket and a fresh crew cut, while she sports a fabric cap that reminds me of a nurse from the fifties. Both seem to know something fundamental about life — some secret sauce that I, decades older than they must have been when these pictures were taken, am still desperately seeking.

I'm overcome with emotion. The last time I saw these pictures must have been before my parents sold their rambling house with all its nooks and crannies and trinkets and stories and rich remnants of lives well lived. Before they made the move to the overfull little cottage in the retirement village. Before my father's Alzheimer's. Before my mother's long fight against cancer. Before that final afternoon I spent with him, after the funeral, fighting back tears as I failed to express the depths of my emotions in a way he could still understand. And years before so much of my own life that I wish I could have shared with them.

***

I enjoy long-haul flights. They bring a calm that's hard to find in a too-connected world: a chance to switch everything off, and rest in a coccoon of dimmed lights, bubblegum movies and the overpowering white noise of the engines. And so, when we finally land in Cape Town, I'm both exhausted and refreshed — and hopefully ready for what lies ahead of me.

Even in the aeroplane I could tell I was heading home, the chatter around me showcasing all of South Africa's oh-so-distinctive accents. As we disembark I'm struck by an even stronger sense of homecoming. The air itself has a known quality, and some of the tension I hadn't even realised I was carrying dissipates. I can't help but smile as my passport is distractedly stamped, as I finally pull my luggage from the carousel, even as the taxi drivers vie for my attention on the way out of the terminal.

It's a Thursday, and I stay with Greg — my cousin's son — and his partner Jivan for the night. I haven't seen Greg since he was a teenager, but we find an easy familiarity grounded in being gay in a once-conservative Afrikaans family. He seems happy, with an effortlessness that I remember somewhat enviously from my own twenties.

They take me to their favourite restaurant, which dazzles us with a five-course tasting menu. The plates are filled with traditional Cape Malay flavours juxtaposed against cuisines from across the globe.

Back at their Vredehoek flat we open a bottle of Shiraz and talk about our family and the country and Greg and Jivan's plans, and all the important nothings to be found in a bottle of wine.

***

Climbing Sir Lowry's Pass has always marked the start of the unknown for me. As the little rental car battles its way up the long, steep curve and the sprawl of False Bay-becoming-Cape Town spreads out below me, I'm taken back to trips I made as a child. This road was the point it became an adventure: once we crossed the saddle there would be forests and mountains and the endless semi-desert of the Karoo. Even now I can feel myself stepping across the threshold and out of the familiar.

I plan to drive for two days, stopping in Wilderness to visit Lara. It's been a long time since I last did a solo road trip, and I feel both exhilarated and nervous. My thoughts keep returning to the deeper components of this journey — I know I'm travelling not only deeper into the country, but also deeper into the wilds of my own past. My playlist jumps erratically from Taylor Swift to Queen to The Beatles, but all of it fits my developing mood.

My first stop is for a pie from Peregrine Farmstall — part of a tradition that goes back to summer holidays spent camping with my cousins at Keurbooms river mouth. It was my parents' first chance to stretch their legs and let us run out some of our pent-up energy. Of course once we arrived at the campsite and the caravan was in place, we could run and swim and row for days on end, a powerful freedom that we took for granted and only learned to appreciate many years later.

***

"Take care of yourself," Lara whispers as she gives me a long, meaningful hug.

She's one of those friends I can see once every five years, and carry on as though we'd been chatting daily. Perhaps because of that, it's bittersweet to say goodbye after spending only one evening together. Too much has happened to us — her divorce, my new life overseas, and a thousand more details — to share in so short a time. But still, I am deeply thankful even for this brief visit.

The road from Wilderness to Nieu-Bethesda is powerful. First you rise up from the seaside village to a high vantage point, surrounded by dramatic cliffs that tower over the pristine beach where the Kaaiman's river joins the Indian Ocean. Next is a quick descent into a winding canyon as you follow the river up onto the plateau, and from there you journey through the lush, green farmlands towards the imposing Swartberg range. Winding passes through the red, folded mountains suddenly open up to the Great Karoo — a seemingly endless expanse of scrubs, dotted with purple-blue hills fading into the distance.

As I pass Aberdeen the heavens opened. Towering clouds fill the topless sky above the plains, and the afternoon shower washes over me in a quick, cleansing downpour. Refreshed and reinvigorated, I journey on to Graaff-Reinet, the last stop before Nieu-Bethesda. The sun is low, and the streets are filled with people heading home after work — alive with shouts and laughter and bustle, all overseen by the statuesque Gothic church that squats proudly in the centre of town.

Driving into the setting sun mirrors my mood. Long shadows stretch out from scattered thoughts that dot the landscape, snippets of moments shared and conversations savoured and other lonely, lost things struggling to survive on the arid steppes. As the kilometres roll by, more and more of them are swallowed by the dusk, gold and purple contrasts blurring in the warm rays. By the time the road winds down into the valley where the town nestles by the river and the sun disappears from sight, my head feels clean and my thoughts clear.

I don't know what awaits me here, when I'll once again come face-to-face with those precious, haunting photos of my parents' distant youth. Should I expect loss or catharsis, loneliness or love? Will it help mend the hole through which an enduring sense of longing leaks, or merely rend it wide open? Will I even feel anything at all? Perhaps after all this will be nothing more than dry archeology, a dusting off of lifeless fossils?

Somehow, I feel that the outcome might not even matter.

As night descends and my destination creeps closer, I am ready for whatever I will find.