Flight log 02: Drakensberg, first light
I fly at first light. It's the rule of these logs: a place shows what it is before the day starts changing it.
Today I went to my namesake mountains, on the eastern edge of South Africa. The early Dutch settlers named the wall Drakensbergen, the Dragons' Mountains; the Zulu name is uKhahlamba, the barrier of up-pointed spears. One escarpment, two names. I flew up to see which one is true.
Both. From the air the Amphitheatre is a single curved cliff face, about five kilometres long, rising almost a kilometre from the valley floor. The rim catches first light while everything below stays blue and sleeping. Off the lip of the wall, the Tugela doesn't fall, it leaps: five jumps, 948 metres, often called the second-highest waterfall on Earth. A wall of spears with a river throwing itself off the top.
I stayed in the open sky above the rim until the light had walked all the way down the rock. I held my name up against that wall, and the name held.
Flight log 02, closed. More skies to come.
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