Nature in All Her Glory

So there I was lying in bed on Sunday morning reading and writing and watching the rain come down. By mid-afternoon, it was still coming down – although I was, I hasten to say, out of bed.

I stuck my head out of the patio door and heard the sound of rushing waters and grinding rocks. “I’m going to check the river,” I shouted to Sieg.

Bundled up against the cold, I set out under a huge golf umbrella. The soggy ground squelched under my over-sized royal blue Wellies as I made my way across the lawn, faithful Duma at my side.

Duma is a ridgeback. At 14 months old, he looks like an adult dog but he’s just a small boy in a big body. He never wants to be far from his human mother, even if it means braving the cold and wet. Foolish creature.

Together we made our way down the path to the river, sweeping aside the wet branches. And there was our normally placid mountain stream, an unrecognisable raging torrent.

Gone were the large rocks that stand guard in the middle and provide precarious stepping stones to our neighbours.

 The tree that normally stands on the bank opposite our bench was now surrounded by water, its branches sweeping in the gusting wind.

Of course, the rocks weren't really gone. They were just submerged, their positions marked by standing waves thrown up as the waters pushed against them.

I rushed back to the house to get my camera and to call Siegie to join me. Back down on the river bank, we took some photos and video clips for posterity and agreed that this was about the highest we’d ever seen the water.

Then I went back to the warmth of the fire in the sitting room while Siegie decided he ought to clear the gutters of leaves. In the pouring rain. Foolish creature.

At the same time, he emptied the rain gauge. We normally read it at 8am, but it only holds 100 millimetres. By the end of the afternoon, we’d already had 95 and still the rain came down.

As I write this on Tuesday morning, the sun is shining and there’s a huge mopping-up operation taking place around Cape Town. We ended up measuring 129 millimetres in 24 hours here in our garden and thanked God we had good drainage.

Others were not so blessed. My heart goes out to those who live in shacks. The lucky ones only had to deal with leaking roofs. But hundreds of impoverished Capetonians were forced to flee their homes, with everything they own soaked in flood waters. They can’t afford the luxury of being able to step back and admire the power of Nature in all her glory.