The other day I spoke to a dear friend all the way in Romania. In the midst of a global pandemic, stuck in a little box-of-a-apartment on the fourth floor, staring out of her window and noticing the first, beautiful signs of Spring after a harsh snow-white winter... "Nature is really not empathising with us", she remarked. How painfully true... Although we in the Southern hemisphere are moving swiftly toward winter, I definitely share in her disappointment...
I love autumn in Cape Town - lazing like a dassie in the slow, comforting glow of the sun; peace from the relentless "Kaapse Dokter" (the persistent, dry south-
(You see?! All this longing for the great outdoors is making me sickeningly poetic!)
As if to punish humanity, Mother Nature seems lovelier than ever, and - might I add - pretty pleased to see much less of us! Penguins stroll through Simon's Town, not having to look left-and-right before crossing the street. In Adelaide, a traffic camera spots a bouncing roo, off to do some window shopping. In Israel, where there once was scores of people, wild boars now calmly cross an intersection (conscientiously using the zebra crossing, no less!).
Let us hope that through these harsh times, hard lessons are learnt and a new-found understanding and respect emerges for what is truly irreplaceable in our lives. If we did not realise it before, may it now finally sink in: "The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth".
