What matters most?

In modern city life, the latest trends, discoveries, and inventions shape how things are done. In traditional life direction remains anchored in styles of earlier generations. Up here in the highland grasses of Drakensberg and Malutis life is all solitude and vista, yet never far from the harsh demands and meagre resources of reality. They challenge differently in every season.

Yet, no man is an island, and no island is out of reach. Stories make the young explore, return with messages that bewilder. City slums will be almost inescapable. Almost means that a few get rich, the gold is elusive. Resolve divides the children. Some go, some stay. 

Back here the land offers herbs and bulbs for use but walk far searching for them. The river offers clean water but fetch it on foot. The hovel is home. The animals are friends. And food. Subsistence is sustained from resilience, ingenuity and courage. The mind is as much used as in the city, the problems real, serious and intimate. They don't go away until solved. Diligence in planting and harvesting is a survival requirement. Labour is shared and celebrated. Tools that break are repaired or replaced with resourcefulness, from memory or explained by an ancient. 

There’s peace in the quiet, contentment in the minimalism. The routine settles the spirit; the smile comes from children antics. There’s kinship under the skies. The days are lived.