I have hiked for some years the trails in the foot hills of the Outeniqua mountains. Some ten or twelve years ago, on returning after an absence of a couple of months, the place had become simply unrecognisable. Much of the bush and most of the trees had been levelled, the roots, torn up by bulldozers and graders, now lay scattered everywhere and together with huge controlled burnings had turned the landscape into a bleak morass. The day before I had picked to go hiking, it had been raining heavily and the whole place was just a expanse of blackened stumps and churned up mud. The construction machines had, amongst other things been cutting firebreaks and their huge tracks had in places filled with water adding an even more dismal appearance to the scene. I decided to go anyway. A mile or so out I got caught in a downpour where I found myself marooned on an outcrop of rock. I considered my options. It was at least one mile back to the car and to continue on, was nearer two. I was already soaked through and there seemed no real advantage in turning back and who knows? Maybe it would become easier; It didn’t.
I had to cross one particularly wide series of deep muddy tracks, so in desperation, I began pulling up rocks and branches from out of the mud around me and heaving them in front. After a time I began to get organised and started making some progress. I was actually constructing a very crude mobile causeway. As I was busy heaving boulders and branches around in the middle of this rain lashed plain, I began asking myself how on earth had I ended up in this plight; in a thunderstorm, soaked to the skin and covered in mud? Half an hour earlier I had been lying on a bed reading. I realised I had actually become engrossed in what I was doing-road building- and was suddenly struck with the familiarity of the situation. I’d been here before, lots of times. So had many others I suspected. The memory of that scenario stayed with me some time and the more I thought of it the more it appeared worth developing. The idea of cutting ones path through an utter wilderness and at the same time becoming lost in it -enthusiastic even. “Bridge over the river Kwai” or “The myth of Sisyphus.” Definitely a theme worth developing. “Causeway” and some spin offs.
Nearby is the George reservoir which has now had it’s spillway rebuilt and raised to increase the dam capacity. I had taken photos, some years ago, of the flow patterns over the old spillway and here are a couple of paintings “Spillway” that I did from them.
