1.WILD

‘It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even getting from point A to point B.

It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. That’s what Montgomery knew, I supposed. And what Clarke knew and Rogers and what thousands of people who preceded and followed them knew. It was like I knew before I even really did, before I could have known how truly hard and glorious the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) would be, how profoundly the trail would both shatter and shelter me.’

Extract from WILD, by Cheryl Strayed.

In three months, Cheryl Strayed hiked most of the trail through Nevada, USA and then the whole of the neighbouring Oregon, on her own! She then wrote Wild, an account of her experiences en route. Reese Witherspoon starred in the movie version of the book.

History of the Pacific Crest Trail

In 1926, Catherine Montgomery, a retired teacher, envisioned a border-to-border “high trail winding down the heights of our western mountains” to run from Mexico to the Canadian border. She inspired oilman and avid outdoorsman Clinton Clarke, who was appalled by a culture that spent “too much time sitting in soft seats in movies”. (This was in 1932!) Clarke lobbied the Federal Government to set aside a wilderness corridor for the trail. Clarke then met young Warren Rogers, who assigned teams of YMCA volunteers to chart and in some cases construct what became the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). Rogers also worked passionately to overcome the legal, financial and logistical obstacles in the way. Sadly he died the year before the 2-foot-wide and 2, 663 mile-long trail was finished in 1992.

Wild at Melville Koppies

“Is this the veld?” A wide-eyed ten-year-old asked this question on a school visit to Melville Koppies. Well, if you have lived your whole little life in manicured suburbia, the Melville Koppies are a whole new world. This is even the case for some adults upon joining the scheduled tours and hikes for the first time.

If we compare the duration of our 10km hike to Cheryl Strayed’s lengthy journey, it would probably be less than half a day in her three-month trek. Nevertheless, our hikes are challenging. This year people have used the hikes to train for base camp at Everest and Kilimanjaro, as well as for SA’s Whale and Otter trails. Our hikes are also very sociable events, with visitors making new like-minded friends on their quest for fun and fitness.

The physical challenges to chart and construct the PCT were immense. About 16 years ago, the Melville Koppies volunteer Conservation Team had a taste of this while constructing the 500m ‘Bushman Trail’ on the steep, wooded northern slopes. Veteran trailblazer, the indomitable Richard Hall, forged his way through virgin bush, mapping out a sustainable trail along suitable contours. The team followed, hacking away trees and shoring up Richard’s carefully delineated path with huge rocks. This was a hugely rewarding, if challenging exercise.

Education in the Wild

The Melville Koppies Central section (a proclaimed 50ha nature reserve), apart from providing fabulously varying terrain and vegetation from bare rocky ridgesto dense riverine forests for our cross-koppie hiking trail, is a marvellous outdoor classroom/laboratory/fieldwork and research resource. Lecturers and students of many disciplines from Wits (The University of the Witwatersrand) and UJ (University of Johannesburg) are frequent visitors. Enterprising teachers bring their primary and secondary school learners on specially-booked tours to enrich what they have taught in the classrooms.

We would love retired teachers to join our School Guiding Team. This involves lots of preparation and presentation, but NO MARKING and NO BUREAUCRATIC ADMINISTRATION.Volunteer teachers also need to be fit for these two-to-three-hour school tours.

Melville Koppies EAST

This 10ha section is open daily, and is free, for those who like to walk alone and commune with nature. You may be greeted by one of the many socialised dogs such as Samoyeds, Salukis, Staffies and assorted braks that bring their owners to the Koppies for daily walks. There is safe parking near two of our entrances, the one opposite the PUMA garage in Rustenburg Road, and the other in Kloof Road off 7^th Avenue in Melville.