"Wandellied"

Wandellied — A Walking Song

There is a song I have known my whole life, though for many years I forgot that I knew it.

Wandellied — a walking song. Simple, unhurried, South African to its marrow. It is a song about a man who grows weary of the city, who picks a walking stick from the nearest thorn tree, and simply walks. He listens to the sound of his own footsteps over mountain and valley. He sleeps under a blue ceiling stretched wide over open fields, and at night the stars wave to him from far away.

My grandfather used to sing it. On Sunday afternoons he would come to the small farm in Honeydew where I was born, and I would climb up onto his shoulders. Then we would walk — down through the grass, down to the little river, the riviertjie — while he sang. I felt completely safe up there. He was a calm, quiet, loving man. The kind of person who made the world feel steady just by being in it. And he knew instinctively where to go when steadiness was needed. He went outside. He went toward the mountain, the river, the open sky.

He was not afraid of a mountain either. He once cycled from Stellenbosch to Worcester to visit friends for the weekend — because that was simply what you did. Coming home over Bainskloof Pass above Wellington, he and his companion would race each other to the bottom. On bicycles without brakes. The mountains that frame my view here in the Boland are the same mountains he knew with his whole body — their gradients, their wind, their long descents. These were not just landscapes to him. They were companions.

These paintings are my attempt to honour that. They are painted in the landscapes he loved, and they carry what he understood so naturally — that nature is always there, always generous, always willing to receive us. That the mountain asks nothing of us except perhaps to notice it. And that sometimes, when the hours are hard, the best thing you can do is pick up a walking stick, step outside, and sing.

I hope they bring you a little bit of outside.

 

Die wandellied

As ek moeg word vir die lewe in die stad, lok my die wandelpad;
As ek moeg word vir die lewe in die stad, lok my die wandelpad;
in die veld pluk ek 'n wandelstaf van die naaste doringboompie af,
en sing my wandellied, en sing my wandellied.

Of ek luister na my eie voeteval op pad oor berg en dal.
Of ek luister na my eie voeteval op pad oor berg en dal.
Dan's ek weer die eensaam wandelaar na die lekker landstreek wie-weet-waar,
'n swerwer lewenslank, 'n swerwer lewenslank.

En die blou plafon wat oor die velde strek sal saans my sluimer dek.
En die blou plafon wat oor die velde strek sal saans my sluimer dek.
En die sterreheer sal kom en gaan oor die maanverligte hemelbaan
en vriend'lik wink van ver, en vriend'lik wink van ver.