Tag Archives: wanderlust

Beginnings, Creativity, Dreaming, Grace, Gratitude, Reflection, Ritual, Storytelling

2024 – My Year of Wild

‘Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it is about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you.’

Paul Coehlo

It started a couple of years ago and a deal made with the benevolent Universe that I would learn to Trust my intuition. It would be a journey to recognising and reconnecting with that calm, clear voice of authentic Me as separate from ego. But what a journey it has been! My Year of Trust in 2022 brought me dreams come true and an indelible lesson in how to balance what I can make happen and what I invite to let happen.

2023 has been My Year of Light and Love, the next steps on my growth journey. To find balance in how I love, but also to embrace the ‘who I am inside’ and finally allow her to be loved just as she is – Sunshine Reflected. Another incredible year of synergy and alignment and abundance, living my Dream Life. Choosing the way of love over fear always.

In this Love Lightly space, I found a muse with grace and wisdom beyond his years. He has a mind and heart wide open, paying close attention to each one of my details knowing how to take me to my very limits. He has actual depth and insight, resilient, and with a bite that keeps the world in check. So I have finally started writing the book I somehow knew was always in me. I am being pushed creatively and that is showing up in my art too.

At this time of reflection and setting intention for the coming year, some words are showing up in my journalling repeatedly….

If you have read any of my other writing, you will know that I have a firm belief in the energy that connects All that is. I have found that tapping into this energy at a cosmic level is what drives intuition and instinct. Overwhelmingly this energy is good and benevolent, in my experience. So part of my reflection time involves looking for guidance and wisdom from Nature and Universe:

The tree wisdom card I pulled from my oracle deck as I thought about my word for 2024 was the energy of Regeneration from Yew.

I used the wonderful energy of the recent full moon in Cancer on 26 December as a focus for this end of year reflection. The last full moon of 2023 brought an invitation to come back to our hearts as we prioritise nurturing ourselves to become the safe space we long for.

Venus is in Sagittarius at the moment until 23 January, with a clear energetic shift that inspires a celebratory approach to life, love and relationships, moving closer to authentic self. Sagittarius inspires us to recover our connection to our authentic, undomesticated self, to Natural Laws, and to our intuition, being drawn to freedom, authenticity and honesty. During the upcoming days, chances to recognise how freedom and connection aren’t mutually exclusive, discovering how to nurture both the need for intimacy and the desire for independent exploration of life.

A few months ago, I wrote about Reclaiming Wild, all about taking back the concepts of  Wild, Wildness and Wilderness as part of my Soul’s vocabulary – a way of expressing true nature-connectedness, a pattern of my Soul, my Soul Maker and the season I now find myself in living my Dream Life.

What a lovely concoction of Cosmic and Nature energy to feed mind and heart and set intention!

So, on the foundation of two previous words for the year, a journey back to authentic Me has begun. A reclaiming of Wild and Untamed Me, a fully reconnected back to Nature version of Me. Embracing my Wild Heart. Empowering a balanced sacred-feminine, divine-masculine essence of Me. So I am better able to live wholeheartedly and fulfill my Great Purpose.

Me empowered, rewilded, reclaiming my Wildness means pure space is open for empowering Other, empowering Wilderness. I hope by reclaiming my internal Wild, I will be more in tune with Nature. This spiritual rewilding enabling me to better serve the Conservation Collective I am part of. This Collective is all about the job of physical rewilding as a Nature-based Solution for the environmental and social ills of our time.

Rewilding. It is messy and real and imperfect. A bit like Nature really – wild, messy and full of imperfection but Nature knows how to embrace her magic. Understanding more deeply what it means to be human, to be beautifully imperfect, to be wonderfully lost at times. I am excited about embracing my magic and my happy wanderer ways in 2024 – My Year of Wild 🖤

Africa, Birth Place, Blessings, Current Events, Dreaming, Family, Gratitude, Holidays, Human Wildlife Coexistence, Nature, Reflection, Ritual, Storytelling, Travel

Wanderings Day 30

We have arrived at the last day of this challenge to self – wander travel memory lane all through April 2020. A way of travelling virtually while in my lockdown bubble. Dreams of travelling again when this too has passed. An exercise in gratitude for all I have been given in this life already.

Going to finish with Kruger memories part two.

No more stories…. Just some Johnny Clegg wisdom… from the Johnny Clegg & Savuka song Great Heart

There’s a highway of stars across the heavens
There’s a whispering song of the wind in the grass
There’s the rolling thunder across the savanna
A hope and dream at the edge of the sky
And your life is a story like the wind
Your life is a story like the wind
I’m searching for the spirit of the great heart
To hold and stand me by
I’m searching for the spirit of the great heart
Under African sky

Guka ‘mzimba (body grow old)

Sala ‘nhliziyo (but heart remain behind)

Africa, Birth Place, Education, Family, Girl Empowerment, Grace, Gratitude, Holidays, Human Wildlife Coexistence, Nature, Reflection, Storytelling, Travel, Wildlife Conservation

Wanderings Day 29

Only two more posts to go for this virtual wander down my travel memory lane.

Two days of Kruger National Park memories… this is part one.

I was just looking down the list of rest camps in Kruger. It turns out over the many adventures there since childhood I have stayed at all but two.

My favourite area to wander would be from Satara northwards.

Pafuri is particularly magical with all those fever trees and glimpses of nyala in the shadows by the Luvuvhu River. That brings to mind the Nyala Walking Trail – sublime!

Actually any of Kruger’s walking trails are a fabulous experience. Lucky enough to have walked a few of these over the years too.

Kruger visits were so formative for me. I learned so much about ecology and how ecosystems work simply from soaking up all the info I could get my hands on. Here is where I fell in love with birds and took up birding under my wonderful Dad’s guidance.

Kruger has a distinct spirit of place. The air crackles with its magic as you arrive at the gate (any of the gates). I thought this might change over the years, grow dim somehow as I aged. But no. I got to visit again last year briefly and the magic is still there.

Now I probably need to say at this point that I am fully aware of Kruger’s history. Not all decisions made in regard to its management both for wildlife and for the surrounding communities have been sound or just over the years.

All I want to focus on right at this moment in time is the gratitude I feel for having had so many opportunities to pass through Kruger’s gates and get swallowed up in that bushveld magic.

Africa, Blessings, Extraordinary Voices, Grace, Gratitude, Human Wildlife Coexistence, Music, Nature, Reflection, Storytelling, Travel, Wildlife Conservation

Wanderings Day 28

Botswana Part 3.

Last virtual wander through the Okavango Delta and surrounds.

Today I am thinking of magical wildlife moments. I got to experience so many during my years there. I still have to pinch myself this time really happened.

There’s the time I had to sleep on the pool lounger as a family of hippo were grazing all round my little housie that night.

Or the 5am deep breath and tiptoe past three sleeping bull elephant (all round the house) to make sure I got to the main area of camp to get ready for guest arrival.

Then there’s a moment with a young she leopard making her way across our island in the Delta. It was twilight and there she was sat on the path ahead of me. Too close before I realised she was there. But she paused before moving off, just long enough for us to acknowledge each other.

Then there’s the time our resident bull elephant stuck his whole head through the office door to get at a couple of marula fruit that had found their way onto the floor inside. Yes, I was in this little camp office at the time.

A lone spotted hyena would make the rounds with me most evenings on lock up after guests had retired for the night…. trotting along after me along the boardwalks…. not too close…. after the first few times of feeling insecure, I actually found him quite companionable.

The Pel’s Fishing Owl family nesting in the tree above my house.

The big python who lived under my house. I never had a rodent problem.

And many more…. that’s breathtaking Botswana! Best place to experience real, wild Africa (just my opinion).

But this kind of magic has a life span. Too much of a good thing and all that… still, I am left with incredible memories and oodles of gratitude for this chapter in my story.

In the wise words of Prime Circle from their song Breathing…

“Here’s to the good times
The bad times
The times that could have been
To the wrong times
The right times
I know we’ll breathe again…”

Africa, Extraordinary Voices, Grace, Gratitude, Human Wildlife Coexistence, Music, Nature, Ordinary Women, Reflection, Ritual, Storytelling, Traditions, Travel

Wanderings Day 27

Botswana Part 2…

Another set of pics remembering my time in beautiful Botswana.

Today I am thinking about the Botswana rhythm. There is a wonderful rhythm to the seasons and natural cycles. The flooding then drying of the Okavango Delta. The migration of the zebra and the elephant.

A time for marula trees to bear fruit which brings the elephants.

September is amazing…. a deep breath before the rains arrive. Unexpected flowers bloom. Babies abound – impala, lechwe, zebra.

January is prickly hot. But some afternoons turn black on the horizon and then the lightening and thunder and rain arrive. The cuckoos and Woodland Kingfisher call continuously. A good time to venture into the reeds in a mokoro hoping for a glimpse of the elusive sitatunga. At Xigera Lagoon the African Skimmers are nesting.

The people of Botswana have a rhythm too. A time to plant. A time to harvest. A time to move the cattle. A time to gather from the wild.

There is a beautiful kinship that weaves the Ba-Tswana together as a people but also connects them to this land. It was so easy to fall into this rhythm and be mesmerised by its beat.