Early morning misty dam at Arum Lily House, Witvoetskloof. Photo: Tracey Shaw

Here I am. The Wayfarer. Shocked to see that the last blog I posted was in April 2014. It feels like yesterday … I have been writing on the Fynbos Retreat website. Posting on the Facebook pages about the daily comings and goings at Witvoetskloof. Relating snippets about the hiking groups as they pass through. Or documenting our trials and tribulations with the supply  of water and power off the grid. The fact that I have not written on this, my personal blog, is surely very telling. The story of my life. Where work invariably becomes the life I live. Not that I can complain about my life, mind you.. I live on a beautiful farm ten kilometres into the fynbos. We have a lovely house ..a real genuine Phoenix that rose from the ruins of an old foreman’s cottage. My bath and shower are clad in stone collected in the area and I get to grow vegetables and herbs. We’ll forget for a moment that most of the fresh produce gets devoured or destroyed by birds, pests and baboons! It came up for me again the other day that I am living in one of the pictures on my vision board made in Fisherhaven in around 2008 or 2009 or thereabouts. As I write both my (now grown up) children are visiting us. The man I love and share my life, bed (and work) with, is sleeping peacefully in this home. What greater blessing can there be? My father and both my brothers have been to visit as well.  Granted not all at the same time, but they have all been to Milkwood Cottage and shared the solitude and grace of this special place. My faithful soul has woken me up, like so many times before. to call me back to write. Today is my birthday and the call to show up at the keyboard was so powerful that it has me typing away at 4am while Witvoetskloof  sleeps under a beautiful clear and starry sky. It never ceases to amaze me how natural it feels once I am here. How I feel when I am writing. It is a part of me almost like a limb or breathing. Although, if it were the latter I would be long gone the way I deny myself the joy of being here. A recurring theme and by no means unique to me . The writer’s lament .. Maybe, just maybe, this year will be different. This new year of my life will be one in which I love myself enough to sit here often with words flowing from my heart and fingers. That I have the discipline to show up time and time again. In good weather and bad. When I feel like it and when I don’t , maybe ,  just maybe this will be my year to write. May it be so. May the Wayfarer travel down literary paths where words, phrases and images dance like leaves rustling in the wind! May my fingers play the tune and sing the song of writers through the ages! May my heart ebb and flow with the yearnings of the storyteller, the narrator, the spinner of yarns. May it be fun, joyous and light. May it be so in 2015.