Memory lane

Yesterday I took a path not travelled since my early teens - the track from Clovelly Country Club along the Silvermine River towards the former Sunbird Nature Reserve. In the late 60s a crowd of us would walk up the valley to visit the friends who managed the reserve and spend the day swimming in a small dam or horseriding on the mountain slopes. We pinched a few carrots from the farm on the way for said horses. These are treasured childhood memories, but yesterday's hike was some 50 years later and traversed the rugged slopes of Trappies Kop and Clovelly mountain as well.
The gentlest southeast breeze (a forerunner of the gales we can expect in the coming months) caressed our backs as we took the steep path up onto the firebreak, pausing to catch our breath and admire the vast expanse of beach at Fish Hoek - the full moon had pulled the plug and it would be a long walk for an early swim!
All along the track, signs of very early spring were evident in the masses of babiana, satyrium and yellow daisies. White daisies lay like snow on the roadside down at the wetlands but sparsely higher up. The views up and down the valley are always a delight, and it is interesting although a little alarming to see how the areas where we used to play have now become completely covered in houses, schools and old age homes. A sad loss of biodiversity in the name of progress.
But the track behind the clubhouse hasn't changed, nor has the tangled mass of alien vegetation lining the river banks. The golf course has perhaps expanded and the greensman's house now has a big fence around it, and the farm fields now lie fallow, but otherwise it was a trip down an otherwise unchanged memory lane.