When we moved to the Lowveld, the plan was simple and singular.
To guide.
And only to guide.
Life, of course, had its own ideas.
Somewhere along the way I learned something important about how I move through this world and how I make decisions when things are no longer clear or neatly defined. I follow energy. Not hype. Not pressure. Not what I think I should be doing. I try to listen instead for the quieter signals of what moves easily, what connects people naturally, and what opens doors without force. When something continually blocks, drains momentum and creates friction, I stop pushing, even when it looks like a very good idea on paper.
That way of working has quietly brought some old projects back into my life (KZNTR is for another post), and at the same time opened completely new ones.
The Hoedspruit Farmers Market is probably the clearest example of a new one that crept in.
Lauren works for the Kruger2Canyons Biosphere and, through that role, became deeply involved in the market. It is more than a decade old and very much alive in its own right, behaving far less like an organisation and far more like a living system that has grown its own rhythms, habits and relationships over time.
It is not only a farmers’ market, but also a craft market, made up of makers, bakers, potters, carpenters, coffee roasters, brewers, artists and growers. It is a wonderfully mixed group of people from all sorts of backgrounds and communities in and around Hoedspruit. Lauren initially took the lead there, and I followed slowly and carefully, because you do not fix something that already works. You protect it. You guard what enters the space. You hold onto what it stands for, especially handmade and locally produced work, without mass-produced goods and without shortcuts.
Together with the Biosphere we act as gatekeepers, and that responsibility carries real weight, because charm is fragile and organic systems can be damaged very easily when you try to optimise them too aggressively.
What fascinates me most, though, is not the logistics.
It is the relationships.
The stallholders and the regulars.
The small conversations that repeat every month.
The quiet loyalty that grows slowly over time.
In a strange way, it mirrors guiding.
Small groups.
Repeated encounters.
Trust built patiently over many shared days.
It is simply another trail.
A social one.
I am deeply ready to walk again.
To sleep on sand.
To follow tracks.
To let days stretch and compress according to weather, terrain and the slow rhythm of people on foot.
Family life through the summer when I don’t guide trails has been full on, but rich and rewarding, being part of their lives as they grow up. As the season approaches, I feel deeply ready to get back out on the trail. It’s been a while, and I can feel it in my body in various ways. Generally, I am not as grounded, at times even a bit unwound. Being in nature really helps me deal with these feelings, and when I am guiding on a regular basis I feel more centred in general. But I also feel a strong pull not to leave. Not to disappear for days into the bush when family life feels this full.
Both feelings are real.
And I have stopped trying to resolve that contradiction.
This is what a multi-threaded life feels like. It is resilient and diverse, capable of carrying us through difficult seasons when one business struggles, but it is also demanding in the way it fragments attention and stretches focus thin, so that some days I move between trail permits, campsite logistics, market administration and school commitments before lunch.
That was never the original dream.
But it is the real one.
And I am slowly learning to trust it. Each piece of it.
The trails still hold me, all of them.