You know how some adventures go down, not according to plan and you get home understanding that you’ll have to go back to that place some day and finish what you started? Well, the Tankwa Karoo National Park is one such place for me.
Two years ago I ventured to the Tankwa, solo, for four days and came back utterly traumatised. Oh, it was all my own doing. Just one too many solo trips for a deep longing heart I guess. But there was method to the madness.
My heart is a fearless leader when it comes to guiding me through life and often, I’m wandering and waltzing through some unfamiliar landscape my heart decided needed exploring. She’s figuring things out you see. She needs space to roam to do that. Not sure if that much space was needed but there we were. In the deafening quiet of the as-far-as-the-eye-can-see expanse of the Tankwa Karoo.
Me, ja…I’m just an innocent bystander getting hit in the cross-fire.
I take books, coffee, drawing and writing materials while heart and mind are in heated debate on what direction we should go in and both state such good points. Heart is covering distance and bagging peaks along the way, while mind is shouting fear based be carefuls and don’t do that, do this.
Over the years of waltzing and wandering through unknown landscapes I have come to understand that movement is medicine for really big emotions. I’m not sure if you have experienced the inability for a body to hold the feelings a heart can feel. It’s deafening. The overwhelm of the emotions coursing through my cells, my physical vessel too small for a heart too big. It derails systematic rational thinking and doing to a point of dysfunction and irregularity. You want to unzip your skin, unscrew your head and burst into the sky to become stardust. That is the expanse you need for holding big emotions. Can I self-combust to become stardust? No, so what’s the next best thing? Roam.
For a long time I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. I struggled to be in one place with an ever growing restlessness I can’t seem to soothe or solve. Until I discovered that being a bit of a nomad is simply my hearts way of helping my body make space for all that I am feeling. Movement eases the holding process, it helps the body expand. Getting rid of unnecessary things that stand in the way of feelings that need to be felt. I honour the process now, instead of judging it. Finally. So, next time I look like I’m about to self-combust, throw my running shoes at me or hand me my car keys, it’s time to roam outside.
Two years later and the chance to go back to the Tankwa arises. An opportunity to change the narrative with one of the best to ever exist.
A window period of three days and two nights between work schedules and opposite geographical locations opened up, which made it a bit of a strike mission but a I-don’t-want-to-miss-out-on-this-mission none-the-less. A travel there day, a forty degree activity day, a travel back day. Three days and a Sarah is all it took to make the Tankwa a place of deep connection where previously it was sparse.
An excerpt from my previous write up: “We all have a place called nowhere inside of us. It’s the part of ourselves we hide from the world, the parts we fear can never be seen, loved and accepted. The long road to nowhere is really the journey we take to know ourselves. It’s a rather courageous thing to come face to face with yourself and still choose to stay.”
The most courageous thing is to stand still long enough for those that cross our path to be witness to who we are and this road to nowhere we are on, and give them a chance to choose to stay.
Sarah, here’s to you, dearest human. Thank you for sticking around.
