Check out my bushveld tree

I would like to share my “bushveld tree” with Platteland. It stands dry and desolate against the backdrop of a blue-grey horizon in the open bushveld plain. It’s early spring, and all the other bushveld trees are already showing signs of renewal, waiting eagerly to welcome the approaching summer.

However, this dry tree just stands there, quiet and demure, waiting for nothing, it seems. With branches like crooked fingers, it somehow manages to survive season after season. It was already on the farm when we moved here. An unknown and unnamed tree. It welcomed us with a crown of leaves, although not as dense as those of the other trees closy by. Various types of birds played hide-and-seek among the leaves at the time. Now they merely perch on the dry branches to observe and survey the world or sit and have meetings.

An agama has been living in a hollow in the trunk for some time now. The first time we came face to face, we both got such a fright that we quickly made ourselves scarce.

But now we are intimate friends and greet one another every day. Aggie – that’s his name – checks me out with his head tilted as he gobbles up an ant or a gogga, and no longer starts at the sight of me. The same goes for me. Once he’s stretched his legs a bit, Aggie makes a dash for his hollow in the tree – but always with one eye trained at the sky, on the lookout for a hungry hawk.

How do you explain to somebody that a dead tree can still have a heartbeat? The heart of this dry trunk is rooted deep in the ground. When the wind blows through the dry branches, the tree remains anchored to the earth, refusing to let go. I learn from this tree: even if the wind blows, we need to hold on to our branches and stand our ground firmly.

When the sun sits low in the west and tinges the sky with shades of orange, red and rose, this tree stands proud, waiting for the moon to peek shyly through the dry branches. The branches reach for the moon and it’s as though this tree breathes once more.