ROAM, MOVE, SHIFT

It’s been a tough few months of winter in the Cape. Work has been great but it has kept me home and somewhat stationary. Although grateful for work in the quiet of the year I have struggled to keep my mental state on a healthy trajectory. More cold, less running. Less running, more depression.

Over the years I have noticed that I am at my happiest when roaming, on the move, moving. May it be a nomadic ancestral bloodline or just what family holidays growing up were like, at the end of the day content is what I feel when I’m on the road. I often dream of a year long sabbatical to just roam.

A work opportunity outside of making jewellery came about and it was no surprise that my smile returned while packing the car to head out. After a particularly difficult few weeks in studio I was happy to trade my tools for much needed time outside, on dirt roads with nature blowing my mind by merely existing.

I believe it important to step out of routine, the mundane, the everyday familiar setups we curate for ourselves. Important because the important things aren’t really the things we gather, but the things we see, feel, experience.

My greatest treasures are my feelings and the memories these can recall. The eagle feather found while adventuring the Spektakel mountain range in the Northern Cape; the smell of Knoffel Buchu unique to a certain Garden Route reserve; the way the sun sets over the Fynbos in the mountains; shells, pressed flowers and klippies just to remember these times where nature allowed me in. The greatest ache in my being is the thought of losing wilderness spaces, not being able to be witness to its magnificence, my chest constricts. These are the things that keep me up at night.

Nature is the reason I get up in the morning, the reason hope lives on in my heart and the reason I believe in magic. May it live on long after we are gone.

I believe it sits above us on the priority list.

Stefni

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