Going to Hell saved my soul – Journal entry 2

The hills flattened as we made our way across them, the crinkles in the road ironing out like the creases in my forehead, as weeks of tension finally starting to lift.

The mood shift started In Oudtshoorn, at a coffee shop with a name I cant remember, but I do remember the pancakes. They were cheap, but they tasted really expensive, with loads of sugar, cinnamon and lemon. We shared a pot of coffee and talked about the road ahead, the one taking us to hell. I’m not being dramatic, that’s just what the place is called, and it sounded like a good place to visit, even if only because Gary had told me stories of cooking an ostrich egg on top of a mountain there a couple years back. That seemed like a nice thing to do, but we forgot the ostrich egg.

‘The Hell’ is located somewhere between the Great and Little Karoo, deep in the Swartberg mountains. The Swartberg pass itself consists of 27km of hairpin dirt road, buffered by orange Quartzite walls, which were blasted away by convicts in the late 1800’s. The turn off to die Hel innocuously indicates a nature reserve, with no warning of the lonely 80km that wind their way into the pit of the desert.

Emptiness, like silence, is deeply unsettling, and the temptation to fill it quickly rises. But there’s not much to fill it with when you’re on a bike, especially if you leave your egg behind. After enduring the awkwardness for a while there seemed to be a tangible shift in the tension, perhaps when I realised that absence is not abandonment, not as a believer, nor in the desert.

After winding our way toward the moon we arrived on a plateau, overlooking the descent into hell. The valley was deep, and the mountains bare, but there was life at the bottom, a river even, with some pink and yellow flowers. Gary found the spot where he had cooked his egg two years back. It was a pretty epic moment for him, but it just made me miss our egg more.

We landed safely in the reserve and picked a spot under the trees. Lunch was steak sandwiches again, with soft chocolate, some flattened granola bars, and a couple battered apples. It felt wrong to be stretched out in the shade eating chocolate in the pit of hell. Maybe Dante got it wrong. On second thought, those apples were completely inedible, and I know they’re much better in heaven, since we all know Eve ate one when she knew she wasn’t supposed to, making life difficult for the rest of us. That must have been some apple.

The trip out of hell was easier than getting into it, which is sad because it would have made a better theological reflection if it were the other way around. But this isn’t really a theological reflection, it just coincidence that the place was called hell and somewhere on that trip I found my soul again.

It came back to me when we were back on the Swartberg pass, looking down on the crags of the Cape-fold rock. Somewhere back in Johannesburg I had lost perspective, which is an easy thing to do in that city. Sitting in the silence I vowed never to lose it again. I’m not sure how long that will last, but at least I know where to find it should I lose it again.

The sun seemed suspended in the sky as we winded our way back down the Outeniqua pass, through George, Wilderness, Sedgefield, Knysna and back to Plett. I’ll never forget the way the fading light reflected on the spray of the sea as we road South, nor how free I was. It felt good to have hell behind me, and the prospect of a steak and beer in front of me.

It turned out that the steak was bad, but it didn’t matter too much, not when you climb into bed with the world beneath you and not suffocating around you.