Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

As I shut down last night for bed, I had one last look at Facebook (because I have no life), and picked up the status of a Highvelder that the rains had arrived up on the plateau.

A little later, when I put my kindle to bed, and I shut my eyes, Ms K’s status bubbled up in my mind, and the smell of that rain seemed to appear in my senses.

Growing up in Natal, on the other side of the Drakensburg, our rain came in several different forms: misty, cloying, hanging, sodden, all being the most common form.  Funnily, this never bothered me.  Many a Michelmas Spring holiday we woke up to 10 days of grey skies, and camellia shrubs dripping with moisture.  Our gum boots would brush off the rain on the lawn, the tractors would churn the mud up in the yard, and dad’s poor cows seemed to trudge wearily through knee high dripping wet kikuyu grass, their udders gently brushing through mud, exasperating the mastitis that plagued the herd in the wet season.  Being a dairy farmers’ daughter, we never complained.  We niggle about the Natal rain now days though, when we head south to visit ‘home’, with little children in tow, praying for sunny skies, but at least 50% of our visits, invariably the skies are grey, and Mom’s Aga stove is more welcome than anything else.

By start contrast, when I experienced the Madikwe storms, nothing has ever come close in its splendour and magnitude that I have experienced.  Gauteng comes close, but much more frightening because the houses seem to block the escape of that thunder.

A geologist will have to correct me here, because though I have every respect for the Madikwe Game Rangers I worked with, they were not necessarily geologists, but I have recollection of them telling us non-ranging people that the range of inselbergs that separated the north of the park to the south is what caused the Madikwe storms to be everything that they were.

I remember the Madikwe Game Reserve up in the North West Province being relatively flat.  This memory is probably because where we were based at the River Lodge, we would always head to the plains for game sighting, and in the early days of the park, the over grazing of its predecessors made the red soil more obvious and flat.  The odd shrub, and ring barked Marula and Lead wood trees stood tall on that open space.  A little further south, the inselbergs rose like a border, an area that I as a chef never frequented enough to relish visiting.  I do remember going up to a view point that looked over those plains, even getting caught in a down pour one evening.  Those storms seem to hang on the peripheries of that plain.  We would ponder whether or not to send guests out on those afternoons, and when we did, we would wait with hot coffee and blankets for when they might come back drenched and coloured with red Madikwe soil.  But they very seldom did.  Those clouds would build up, churning and tumbling in the sky, and after we had sat down to dinner, after we had stripped the meat off the Roast Kudu leg, and put away a little Bushveld Tiramisu, thrown the last drops of mampoer over the dying fire, tucked our guests into their beds, and set our own alarm clocks, those clouds would finally relent.

Out of the depths of my sleep, I would be woken by a sudden flash that would illuminate my attic room through the half-open stable door. (I very seldom slept with my door fully closed).  Darkness again.  Now fully awake, the lightning that would follow the first one would be a little closer.  And though the thunder had not yet arrived in my senses, that lightning seemed to bear noise.  Perhaps the noise was simply my senses opening up, waiting, waiting for the inevitable.  Thing is, with those inselbergs on the perimeter of those plains, when the thunder came, it rolled.

For an hour, the lightning would strike, over and over, crashing, and with each strike, the thunder would roll, and roll, and roll.  Closer and closer, louder and louder.  When that rain eventually came, it was sweet, heavy, welcome.  I would get out of bed, stand at my half open door, smelling it, feeling it, watching it.  Waking up the next morning, tired, and yet somehow refreshed, the sun would be shining bright, and for a few weeks, we would sleep without being woken, with the exception of lions roaring in the depths of our sleep.

Never have I experienced such storms, and although the Highveld’s storms are not far off, they cannot claim to hold my concentration like those Madikwe storms.

Up on the plateau that is Gauteng, with the city static, the rocky geology, maybe the storms portray the anger, the passion, the pace of the city, the sadness of its inhabitants.  For 10 years I lived there.  For 10 years I experienced those amazing summer storms. Many an afternoon lunch session would come to an end, and I would take my espresso outside for a breath of fresh air.  Many times I would watch those clouds gathering, cursing sometimes, because those afternoons would mean sitting on the wet tarmac, my car being pummeled by miniature hailstones, my conscious being pummeled by obnoxious drivers also trying to get home through the traffic lights that gave up working.

The more welcome storms would start crashing around before the sun came up, and lightning would filter through my curtains.  The thunder seemed to ricochet across the houses, loud, reminding us to be grateful for the roof over our heads.  The wind would throw that rain around, lashing at trees, blowing windows open, curtains being thrown up, triggering off house alarms.  Morning traffic would always be awful, but come lunch time, the sun would beat down on us, and the overnight rain would be forgotten about already.

Strasbourg?  Well, if anything like the last 10 weeks is anything to go by, Strasbourg will be like Boston.  Summer was hot when we arrived, and there was no respite in the form of a summer storm.  For 4 weeks, I did not glimpse a grey, heavy cloud. Overnight it seemed to change.  One evening the clouds appeared on the horizon, Anton complained he would get wet on his cycle home, but those clouds sat.  They seem to have sat there for the last 6 weeks.  Sometimes the wind has sent a spray of rain drops across my way, enough to need to buy raincoats for the girls, but mostly, the clouds have been grey and just there.

It’s nice to have a bit of Boston weather for a bit, but I will really miss those amazing storms from the plateau and beyond.  Maybe, just maybe, Strasbourg will prove me wrong.