(Illustration by Meg van Schaik)
Many years ago, on a surfing trip to Transkei, with my brother Kenny, a friend (Mick) doing his Phd on the movement of sea anenomies (ever seen one move?) and an ex provincial scrumhalf (Johnny) who enjoyed knitting scarves, we were just a regular group of guys looking for good waves, good fishing and good weed.
It was at Mdumbi, a wild and milkwoody place circled by a tanzanite river, where spirits danced naked and vigorously in the flames of our nightly beach fires.
We were lying outside our tent by the mouth of the river, as the sun steamed its coals into the ocean, and the sky unveiled its darkening mirror; reflecting a billion drifting embers from our cooking-pit fire.
In the quiet that soaks such a night, only the nightjars and spotted eagle owls dared to colour the canvas of silence that hung above us, held by the sharpened hooks of the stars.
In this moment, a large and perfectly-formed triangular section of stars disappeared. We could not judge the distance of the blot, but it moved across the sky, and as it did, huge patches of the stars went black in perfect triangle form. It moved across the heavens at the same speed as the satellites most sky gazers are all familiar with, leaving deep, triangular Cimmerian trenches of darkness as it cut a swathe across the high stars.
Soon, it was lost to the horizon’s margins, and we were dismembered from our tethers to our orthodox prescriptions of reality.
And no, it wasn’t the weed.
But tonight, as I walk with my new mate Andy on our NHW beat, our eyes and torches scanning the dark places behind trees and hedges, looking for shadowy lurkers with grievous intent, my eyes stray up and high for large triangular shadows.
I hope he doesn’t reproach me for mission-drift, but the truth is, every night on the Watch, my eyes scan the perfect heavens which drape our beautiful village of McGregor for my UFO.
I so want it to come back. And teach us, as humankind, what being high really means.
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