Oliver Keohane shares a story of appreciation after a weekend in the vast wonder of the Koue Bokkeveld.
Images: Oliver Keohane
The night after we returned from the Cederberg, my friend James sent me a screenshot of a quote attributed to the late chef and author Anthony Bourdain.
“To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just understand how lucky you are; it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story you almost by definition, can’t share. I’ve learned in real time to look at those things and realise: I just had a really good moment.”
I had seen the quote before. After a few years of inactivity on my personal profile, Facebook’s floundering algorithm had decided to try to engage me by shaping my timeline with Anthony Bourdain tributes and graphics of the celebrity Chef and travel documentarian’s musings on the human condition.
Bourdain’s description of that moment is beautiful, and I thought so the first time I read it. But, returning to the quote this particular evening, it held more weight.
The weekend gone, we organised a last-minute trip up to James’ family’s farm, in the Kouebokkeveld. James, Connor and I packed into my car after work and drove into the heart of the N1’s Friday afternoon congestion, with grocery shopping to still be done in Ceres and the knowledge that the last hour of dirt road would be driven in the dark.
By the time we crawled into the farm, the Cedeberg’s night sky greeted us in all its glory. The cottage sits at the edge of their Rietvlei dam, cradled by horizons of sandstone peaks and illuminated on this icy late winter’s night by a diamond sky. We loaded the braai area with damp wood, lit the paraffin lamps, poured a milk stout and sank into Bourdain’s untellable moment underneath – on this occasion – a crescent moon. 
Adding log after log to the smoky fire, as the temperature dropped below zero, we spoke and laughed and engineered a terrible braai just before midnight. We retired to bed, caught up on months’ worth of news and experiences.
As cold as it was, nobody guessed below zero. But when we woke up, squinting into a blinding white scene, the dam was quite literally defrosting. The dregs of the previous night’s drinks had frozen, the grass crunched underfoot and rising mist swept across the surface of the water.
The morning air, cold and sharp, woke up the senses, and the distinct winter’s sun of the Western Cape slowly rose to colour the day.
The Rietvlei farm sits at the entrance to the Cederberg, just between Ceres and the Tanwka, Karoo. The farm is split between a working section, owned by Agri Co, and the non-working section shared by James’ family, where one has full domain over a beautiful dam and a network of dirt roads whose horizon line is decorated by Karoo vegetation and Cape Fold slopes.
We had no option but to run towards the horizon and back, swim in the defrosted dam and spend the whole day fishing, on a little float set up in the middle of the water for time to stand still. The sun hung in the air for hours, and one could almost forget the frost of the night before, surveying the tranquil waterscape and the occasional Bass that wrestled with the fishing rods.
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As the clear blue of the Bokkeveld day turned purple in preparation for the evening, James insisted on a drive to a lookout spot, one of two places on the farm where you can find old bush paintings – preserved thanks largely to the private ownership of the area.
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Weaving in and out of the bouldered, seemingly alien landscape, we eventually reached a clearing, enclosed by big shards of sedimentary rock. Stories of time are carved into these sandstone statues, and in one particular cave, the distinct orange hues of San rock art tell their own tale of ancient times.
Sitting on the ledge beneath the rock art and looking into the final light of the day, I thought about the complexity of the Cedeberg’s landscape’s effect on me. Each time I return, my familiarity with the area grows along with the absolute assurance that it is somewhat of a spiritual home. At the same time, cradled by miracles of erosion and arid, fynbos-filled landscapes, I am certain that nobody is special enough to call the Cederberg their own. How could one ever take ownership of the new world we enter each time the Cape Fold range reveals itself in the distance?
To stand among those sandstone giants in the violet evening of the Koue Bokkeveld, to sit underneath a star-dusted night sky and any moon, with two close friends, is to know the luck and wonder of life.
Images: Oliver Keohane
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