Torn between the beauty of Africa and Ellis Island

The car winds through the lowveld.  South Africa revealing her humble soil and her majesty at every turn.  My eyes focus on a book set in Ireland and America.  Glancing up I am aware of my infidelity.  My unfaithfulness to the beauty around me, nature now pouring herself out, a waterfall cascading from rock.  Twinned with unfaithfulness to the work of Kate Kerrigan in her book Ellis Island.  Both deserve the whole of me.  Both call my mind to explore and experience them fully.  I must choose one.

The car stops, a truck has spilled its load of oranges.  Broken fruit bleed pungently into the hot tarmac.  Cars expel their passengers who gather up abundant orange globes.  A festive spirit of bounty unites us, uncaged to share in nature’s banquet.

The path later cleared we nosed under a mountain, through JG Strydom tunnel, continuing our physical journey.  At Phalaborwa we passed through gates into the Kruger National Park.  Elephants, Giraffe, an innumerable herd of buffalo, impala and a leopard showed themselves.  My lens capturing wild spirits.

Later at our chalet at Shingwedzi camp, when darkness and perfect silence cloaked the bushveld, I fed my spirit on a glut of stars.  Then I returned to Ellis Island.  Completing the journey through history, human spirit and love.   The cup of my day runs over after experiencing the best of both worlds.  These lines at the close of Ellis Island rang true.  “I had needed the bobbed hair and the trinkets and the fancy manners so that I could see beyond them.  I had needed to experience progress so that I could step back into who I was ….”  Last year Kate Kerrigan captivated me through the pages of ‘Recipes for a perfect Marriage’, a love story which defies the ‘love at first sight, bed of roses’ formula of written romance.  Recipes For a Perfect Marriage left its mark as my favourite ‘Chic Lit’ book.