By Johnny Snyman

Cool was the breeze that lazily felt its way along the rocky coastline, gently being urged on by the icy currents of the Atlantic ocean. The late January midday sun of 1995 looked down upon the barren desert of the South African west coast and painted the landscape once again with passionate fury.

In the distance a jackal buzzard gracefully glided down and proudly settled himself on an old and weathered branch atop a dune. As I breathed in the cool salty air of that welcome breeze, the old dunes surrounding me took on a new meaning and my thoughts drifted away for a while into the distant past.

Among these very dunes the Khoisan people, the Bushmen, feasted from food freely granted by the sea and her shores, for all along the shoreline small clusters of empty limpet and periwinkle shells remain to this day. But more so, with patience prevailing, sifting through the sand around these areas can reveal small but priceless little treasures: small beads delicately crafted from ostrich eggshells. Simple decorations worn by the women and children, fashioned into bracelets. Jewellery they did not need, for bestowed upon them by the heavens, they had many a star to choose from every night under clear desert skies.

Part of the Khoisan's kingdom was indeed these desert dunes. They may have been simple people, but they were true stewards of the land they lived with. Now, their footprints along with the laughter of children around the firelight, listening with eagerness to hunting tales of the elders, have long ago been blown away and scattered over an unforgiving landscape by the timeless winds of change.

I lazily reached out for my bow and rose, pondering over the thought of ending the day's roving with some flight shooting on one of the long open beaches close by, but the idea dwindled away like dense fog caught unawares by the sun, for twelve yards ahead of me the erect twitching ears of the hare evoked my interest....

Such an opportunity comes rarely to pass for hares, I knew, were creatures of the night, seeking refuge under shrubs by day from not only the heat, but of all things - growling stomachs!

Should one unknowingly approach its hideout in daylight hours, he will sometimes cunningly allow you to pass, lying perfectly still and watching your every move with ears pressed alertly flat along the back. Quite likely then, he will dash away with such sudden speed, only to leave the eye of the beholder totally amused to be a first hand witness of the true origins of dust devils!

Still staring perhaps a little too hard into the back of his furry head, seizing the moment to sneak an arrow onto the bowstring, seemed like forever. But then, the movement of the uncoiling recurves finally stirred his curiosity. The head now turning and those ears slowly and agonizingly beginning to lean towards the back! I had visions of science proving my "dust devil theory" wrong after all...
But then the wooden arrow sung its song.

Once again in a forgotten kingdom of the Khoisan a bow was drawn, to take the life of another creature. I saw the jackal buzzard spread its wings and majestically soar towards the heavens. And I still see the African sun looking back at me from those big moist eyes of the hare lying still at my feet. Perhaps the elders were there, watching all the time. They must have nodded, for then fairly blew the cold southwester. And the footprints I left behind among those lonely dunes that day were soon blown away. They mingled with others of another time to tell the tale of a hare, around the dying embers of a forgotten campfire.