From city to wilderness — embracing the interconnectedness of life in Africa's vast landscape

The word “spirit” comes from the Latin “spiritus”, meaning breath. It is in African wilderness that I feel most inspired. It is where I can breathe most deeply, where I feel most myself. 

I grew up as a privileged urban South African, with a comprehensive Western education and the comforts and conveniences of a capitalistic society. Yet for many years I sensed a simmering disconnection and disorientation. I sometimes wondered: Where do I belong? 

I once camped alone in the southern Kalahari, on the edge of a seasonal lake that fills with water during the summer rains.

At first, I felt a tinge of fear, knowing I was the only human in an immense landscape. Back home in Cape Town, I was part of an extensive human community. But in the Kalahari, and on subsequent journeys into the wilderness, I discovered a very different kind of community. 

Gemsbok, springbok and zebras wandered past my campsite, seeking shade under camel thorn trees. A ground squirrel befriended me in return for food scraps, and a yellow-billed hornbill sat on my chair, squawking away. Lions came to investigate at night and a leopard emerged early one morning at the edge of the thickets, scanning his territory. 

In a few days, I slipped back into Nature’s rhythm.

I wore nothing but shorts and a hat, grew a beard and walked barefoot on timeless Kalahari sands. My bed was a camping mattress on top of my 4x4. I cooked food on a small campfire. 

I had books to read, but soon got bored with them. Staring at a book thirty centimetres from my face seemed a misuse of my sense of sight when the boundless Kalahari was all around me, and Sirius and Canopus blazed above me at night. My eyes recalibrated to the far horizons, the movement of distant animals and the turning of stars. 

I stopped looking at my wristwatch — I took it off. I forgot what day of the week it was, and I didn’t care. There seemed to be no past and no future. The days merged into each other and time seemed to slow down. There was so much space and freedom in the Kalahari, and this seemed to create space and freedom inside my mind and heart too. 

I became aware of the sun’s position in the sky, the phase of the moon, and the direction of the breeze as it blew gently against the hairs on my legs.

My hearing retuned to all the subtle sounds: the soft warbling of birds, the distant howls of hyenas and the scuttle of a beetle across the sand. I was finally using my ears as Nature intended. 

After a while, I realised I could hear my own breath. In the searing silence of a Kalahari noon, it seemed louder than ever. I became aware for the first time of how my lungs expanded and contracted with no conscious effort. I was amazed that it had taken me so long to appreciate my reliance on Earth’s atmosphere. And I realised, too, that I shared this precious atmosphere with all other creatures. When the lion breathed out, I was breathing in. And when the springbok breathed in, I was breathing out. 

At times I seemed to be merging into my surrounds; I wasn’t sure where I ended and where Nature began. I knew from textbooks and ecology that all of life is intertwined, but in the Kalahari I began to feel it.

I wasn’t only Scott Ramsay, the photographer. I was also a human animal, an Earthling, in relationship with all of life. This awareness came effortlessly, without thought or intention. It just happened to me because I was there, in the Kalahari. I felt incredibly small in the vast wilderness, but I also had an unbreakable sense of belonging. I had come home to Nature – and myself.

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DM

Spirit of Africa by Scott Ramsay is published by Quivertree. R50 of each book sale goes to the Endangered Wildlife Trust.