The faraway tree
Bobby Jordan visits an old childhood haunt centred on memories of a giant oak
THERE is a mountain path that snakes through a cleft in the earth to arrive at the foot of a single giant oak tree in the Kromrivier Valley. My father introduced me to this tree when I was still a seedling but the oak was in its prime, sporting a giant green afro studded with 10 billion acorns.
Its branches reach right across the Krom River, such that it is possible to be entirely inside it while perched on a mid-stream boulder. The river flows through the tree, creating a sealed-off wonderland that sighs and sways in the breeze slipping along the valley.
Over time, the oak grew ever more magnificent until it was scorched in a wildfire. But come summer it would still burst into life and I would disappear inside. Later, I took my wife in there too.
When our child was born, we took her straight to Old Oak Tree.
We missed one summer and only returned last week. It was too late — the tree was dead. The branches across the river were bare, the wide trunk blackened by yet another fire. My lifelong friend was just a skeletal outline against the Cederberg sky, and I stood there a while gazing up at another plot-point in my life.
Getting to Kromrivier — about three and a half hours north of Cape Town — isn’t easy, but leaving seems almost impossible. Countless travellers have fallen under its spell since the area was first “discovered” by the Mountain Club of SA almost 100 years ago, when Kromrivier was a virtually unknown family farm owned by “Wit” Andries Nieuwoudt, himself a keen mountain hiker.
Since then, it has become a place of pilgrimage for many outdoor enthusiasts, rock climbers, mountain bikers, and fynbos layabouts. A regular visitor was Cape Town poet Stephen Watson, who penned some of his finest works in one of Krom’s bungalows, just a few kilometres downstream from the Old Oak, among a small forest of its descendants.
“In these mountains, after a while, one’s experience of the world, so often thinned out and denatured by other time-bound imperatives, starts to deepen once more,” Watson wrote.
Although remote and rugged, the Cederberg is one of the oldest inhabited places in the world. Ancient rock paintings dotted among red ochre crags surrounding Kromrivier bear testimony to Khoisan civilisation, which survived in some parts of the Cederberg until comparatively recently. Here you will find seemingly incongruous paintings depicting aspects of “modern” life, such as wagons, guns and clothing, and it was here that a Khoisan painter was caught in the act and fled, leaving his tools behind. It is the only known encounter with a Khoisan painter in recorded history.
The Khoisan were not alone in wanting to leave their mark on this landscape. Former president DF Malan is one of several famous names found inside a cavernous rock formation a few hours’ walk from Kromrivier. Known as Stadsaal (Town Hall), the site was believed to have been a human meeting place for tens of thousands of years.
But the landscape has changed, too. The game that once roamed the valleys has largely disappeared, replaced by occasional farm bakkies and their wagging dust trails. Leopards are spotted from time to time, their numbers bolstered by a conservation programme.
Another endangered Cederberg species is the cedar itself, a coniferous tree that proved popular with rampant timber merchants near the end of the 19th century. An inspection tour in 1805 reported a cedar-wood forest “24 miles long and two miles wide”, but nowadays you may struggle to find a single one.
By contrast, Kromrivier farm has not changed too much in the seven generations since the Nieuwoudt family set up camp. A few modern renovations — they are busy installing a new sewage system and reception office — pale into insignificance against the dramatic rocky backdrop and syrupy afternoon light.
In the scorching summer months, the lily-speckled farm dams and natural river pools provide much-needed refuge from the heat.
Owners Rinda and Pip Nieuwoudt have so far resisted the allure of up-market tourist dollars, partly by retaining some of the original buildings and partly because it is still a working farm. What amenities there are, such as a “child-friendly” farmyard, horse riding and a small restaurant, blend into the rhythm of the working day
Kromrivier is not a luxury retreat. The bungalows are basic self-catering with, at best, a three-year-old copy of Glamour magazine with a few pages missing. The Nieuwoudt family will not be offended when I say that this is not a place for Khanyi Mbau or Top Billing.
This is a place of whispering poets and vanishing trees. A place to lay down your head on the cool belly of the Krom River and drift away forever.