It was books that sent me outside to explore.
As an over-imaginative, scrawny kid enduring boarding school in the dustblown farming town of Cathcart, South Africa, I read and re-read all of the 1950’s Willard Price books from the local library. Through the eyes of world-travelling brothers Roger and Hal Hunt, I could escape into nature and its many strange animal species. Although the stories revolved around collecting animals for zoos (something most of us would be dead set against in this more modern age) and Whale Adventure was about just that - whaling!!- you could tell that, against the context of that time, the boys still had an intense fascination for nature and a reverence for its many species (even while putting them in cages).
The best stories were Price's South Sea Adventure and Underwater Adventure, which featured irritable giant clams, predatory squid, a crazy thing called an oarfish and sharks. I began to fall in love with nature and sat slack-jawed in front of thoese old black and white Sunday National Geographic specials. On beach holidays up the coast, I would patrol the rocky shore until I was sun-blasted, trying to spot dolphins, whales or, first prize, a shark fin (mostly I just found shark purses). I wanted, more than anything, a submarine. At the same time I joined the conservation society at school and spent amazing weekends camped atop the Drakensberg, listening to the baboons barking in the kloofs around and below and above us.
Curiously I didn't go on to study marine biology or zoo later on in life (if I could rewind..?). But I never lost that boyhood fascination with nature.
In my late thirties, I suddenly began trying, whenever possible, to leave the 9 to 5 behind – I'm a corporate editor by trade – and go into the wild, to experience encounters with nature, both in water and on land, that add what I can only call spiritual meaning to my life. Along the way I've been lucky enough to meet many inspiring individuals who are at once living their dreams and adding muscle to conservation awareness and efforts.
Sometimes, it’s not even about long boat trips or drives, and all it takes is going into the back garden to find jumping spiders, mole snakes and chameleons.
It's all an adventure once you set out.
I'm married to Christelle Pike, my queen and soul mate. We live in Cape Town with two members of that most enchanting of all animal species, the Scottish Terrier.
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