TSJ Feature: Life in the Shortgrass

Charlie Ayliff with the author's "incredibly tough and tenacious" gemsbok.

Death comes to the shortgrass Karoo of South Africa just as it does to the long grass made famous by Capstick and others. That fact is poignantly clear to me as I sit on Anthony Gilfillan’s tombstone. The rugged terrain of the Karoo softens to my eyes as it falls away into a notch in the hills framing flat-topped Tafelberg and, farther still, a mountain named for the rhinoceros because of two horn-like peaks at one end.

Finding Gilfillan’s grave is totally unexpected. Professional hunter Bruce Truter and I have just spent an exhausting day walking atop the mountain behind me, hoping to find a kudu. Despite numerous tracks and droppings and limbs broken by bulls rubbing, we find none. We finally pitch off the mountain and work our way down a boulder-strewn 70-degree slope, and as we head back toward Bruce’s truck, we find the grave.

Bruce can tell I’m walked out, so he bids me to wait there while he goes to fetch the truck still a mile or two away. No argument from me. The day is fine, the view is fine, my legs hurt, and I want some time alone to think about last night and what it says about life and death in the shortgrass.

Strange things can happen at night in the Karoo, and sometimes it takes a while to sort them out.